Why does Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard secretly phone home?

How does Foxit keep Adobe Acrobat from phoning home?

Just in case that is actually a serious question:

1. You uninstall the bloated, home-phoning Adobe Acrobat Reader.
2. You install the slim, non-home-phoning FoxIt Reader.

PDFrank after much thought,came up with this jewel in news:35WdnVdCkL8PBLvanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@rcn.net:

Using add+remove programs,replace acrobat with foxit. There is no stopping Adobe-resistance is futile. Some pages require Acrobat(like TaxAct). You could use a old version of Acrobat for those(I use V4). max

I use Foxit but all Acrobat is doing is checking for a new version.

I think it's worth pointing out that the original poster is talking about Adobe Acrobat, not the free Adobe Reader (to which Foxit Reader can be compared).

---------------------------------------- Aandi Inston Please support usenet! Post replies and follow-ups, don't e-mail them.

There should be a setting in preferences. I'll look for it today when I get to work.

If not, though, you can download this:

X-No-Archive: Yes

Probably one of those "tattle tale" features, as I like to call them, that report back to the company on all software that is install, an anti-piracy feature, to make sure that all installed copies of the product are legit.

This feature was remove in Acrobat 6. Even further, you'd rather see the Adobe License Manager Service doing so, not Acrobat itself (and neither impersonated).

Install a software firewall and rig it to block Adobe Reader from calling out. That's what I do. There are several freeware firewalls out there. Perhaps you might want to look at here:

LOL. Not just that you're trying to treat the symptoms instead of solving the problem (configuring the application correctly), we're talking about Adobe Acrobat, not Adobe Reader. Adobe Acrobat's License Managing Service uses Raw Sockets to easily bypass any NDIS layer packet filter, which from its perspective is an annoyance anyway since only stupid users would try stopping a privileged service from accessing network resources since it's futile by design.

Aside from the fact that none of the mentioned software products could ever implement a firewall, where exactly on this website is stated that these software products are known broken and highly vulnerable implementations which actually introduce new security vulnerabilities?

I have the same problem.

Acrobat (the writer, not the reader) is used often to print an entire web hierarchy to a PDF so you can't just block ourgoing connections indiscriminately. If you do, then you'll never be able to capture an entire web hierarchy (as many levels deep as you like) to a multi-page PDF with clickable links that take you to all the web pages.

So, the problem is how to RECONFIGURE ACROBAT so that it stops connecting to the mother ship without stopping connections that you actually want it to make to a desired web page.

Is there any option in Adobe Acrobat (the writer, not the reader) that will tell it to stop connecting to the mother ship at Adobe upon every use?

No. And this is documented.

Erica Eshoo wrote in news:hK%Xi.2583$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net:

No, but as mentioned, use a firewall with specific rule definitions... ie: don't allow Acrobat to connect to the 'mothership' IP address, but all other IPs are fine.

Filtering by application? Sounds like you're suggesting to use the typical "personal firewall" scam.

An any rate, it doesn't work since the Adobe License Manager Service uses the Raw Sockets API to simply circumvent it (which I think is legitimate).

"Sebastian G." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.dfncis.de:

Scam? That piques my interest... how so?

How about modifying the HOSTS file then?

They're promising a lot of things they can't hold even remotely, and due to horribly broken implementations actually make the system more vulnerable?

setsockopts(&socket, SOCKOPT_NO_HOSTS);

Why are you even suggesting to try playing the cat-and-mouse game? There's no chance that you could win.

I don't fully understand.

1. I (now) understand there is no option to stop Adobe Acrobat 7 (the writer) from connecting to Adobe upon startup.

1. You can't software firewall block the "application" from connecting to the Internet because Acrobat web page capture won't work then.

2. But you could add an entry specific for Adobe.com in the hosts file that would redirect any request specifically to Adobe to 127.0.0.1

1. But, what is with this socket stuff (SOCKOPT_NO_HOSTS)? I don't fully understand.

If you don't mind, why do you use Adobe software and then object when they want their software to phone home for any reason? This is an honest question, I really never understand the complaint about using a vendors software that phones home.