Adobe Quietly Monitoring Software Use?

henrypijames writes "For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to what looks like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation."

Comments

Re:Phisher's Delight

[ELProphet]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize a company trying to protect it's investments was unethical. As a previous poster found, there is a single GET request with the "registered" serial number, followed by a 2x2 blank gif. The bandwidth usage is negligible, and it's the only secure way to ensure the product is a valid, legal license. With software piracy as it is, business are justified in taking actions like these to lock their investment down.

As to the address used... that's another point. It would be better to say (in the EULA, that you read, which it may, I don't own CS3 and haven't read the EULA) "This product connects to the internet once per run to verify it's authenticity" and connect to authenticate.adobe.com.

Phoning home is neither unethical nor immoral, and should be expected. It would, however, be nice to not try to hide the fact that that's what they're doing.

Re:How do I block it?

[causality]

In OS X, is there an easy way to block all outgoing communication to *.2o7.net? Can I do that on my router (DGL-4300)?

Don't take this the wrong way please, but if this is a serious question then perhaps you should not be administering that machine and that network.

No, I'm not saying that just to give you grief (yes, I am indifferent to any that is caused) but because there are many network-related security threats and blocking a single domain to solve the problem is something of a whack-a-mole game. It would be well worth your time to find out more about what your router and OS can and cannot do and how they can be made more secure. While an extreme stance on this is not necessary (no one expects you to become security expert but you can learn a lot without going nearly that far) I will say that there is simply no substitute for taking responsibility for your own security, online and off.