Adobe Spying?
Published January 21, 2003
Reading time: 1 minutes.
Adobe decided it would be “cool” to connect their programs to the internet when I’m using them. So I did some digging… and here’s how to stop that from happening.
Delete the folder c:\program files\common files\adobe\web
Uninstall Adobe Illustrator 9/10 and Adobe Photoshop 6.1/7.0
UNPLUG YOUR NETWORK CABLES
Reinstall your Adobe apps
- Make sure Adobe Online and Online Help are unchecked!
RUN EACH PROGRAM ONCE and close it immediately
Plug your network cable back in
This is a documented “feature” according to Adobe. They are collecting IPs and serial numbers to control piracy. I’ve got no problem with that, but on my laptop and my desktop machines, Illustrator would take up to a minute to open a document, either a new one or an existing one. Now, it takes just seconds. So SOMETHING is going on behind the scenes… but ZoneAlarm couldn’t find anything (because it’s junk?) even though my cable modem lights started flashing constantly whenever I opened a new doc.
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