Re: Heads Up if You're Using Adobe Acrobat Reader

Vanguard
Date: 04/13/05 

Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 17:18:08 -0500

"Tony P." <noone@cork.adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:6ZOdnf11FMxcrMHfRVn-qg@adelphia.com...
> The following article appears here: http://lwn.net/Articles/129729/
>
<snip>
> A company called Remote Approach is promising to alert PDF publishers
> as to the "reach and use of their materials." We were curious to find
> out how Remote Approach was going to make good on its promise, given
> that PDF has largely been seen as a one-way medium.
<snip>
> Apparently, Remote Approach's "tag" to our document included the
> addition of JavaScript code causing Acrobat to report back to their
> server
<snip>
> Free PDF readers are unlikely to adopt features allowing the reader to
> silently phone home in response to code stored within the document
> itself. If you must use Acrobat, however, you may want to have a look
> at the JavaScript settings first.

When I disable the Adobe Javascript option, I get prompted on every exit
from Adobe Reader 7.0.x that "This document requires Javascript". That
will appear when the only actions were to open and then close Adobe
Reader without loading any document. So I can leave it on and risk the
covert tracking or I turn it off and get nagged with a bitch message on
every exit where I have to click on a No button (to prevent turning on
the global option).

Looks like I'll be looking for an alternative PDF viewer. in the
meantime, I've configure the app rules in my firewall to always block
any connections from acrord32.exe. Screw them. 

-- 
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