[Athen] Fwd: Adobe tracks your e-book reading habits--and sends logs in plain text

[Bossley, Peter A. (Pete)]

Whatever your position on Adobe gathering this information, (personally I find this practice to be pretty terrible) it is unarguably incredibly bad that they transmit the data unencrypted.
How any company thinks that is acceptable in any way in this day and age is frankly beyond me.

[The Ohio State University]
Peter Bossley
OCIO Accessibility Analyst
Office of the Chief Information Officer Enterprise Applications
017 Enarson Classrooms Building, 2009 Millikin Rd, Columbus, OH 43210
(614) 292-8571 Office
bossley.5 at osu.edu<mailto:bossley.5 at osu.edu> ocio.osu.edu<http://ocio.osu.edu/>
________________________________


From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Dan Comden
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2014 2:20 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: [Athen] Fwd: Adobe tracks your e-book reading habits--and sends logs in plain text

For those of you using Digital Editions, either personally or providing to your students, you may want to know about the giant privacy hole inherent in using this Adobe product. Thanks to Lauren Weinstein for the forward.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy at vortex.com<mailto:privacy at vortex.com>>
Date: Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 9:22 AM
Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Adobe tracks your e-book reading habits--and sends logs in plain text
To: privacy-list at vortex.com<mailto:privacy-list at vortex.com>

Adobe tracks your e-book reading habits--and sends logs in plain text

(Ars): http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/adobes-e-book-reader-sends-your-reading-logs-back-to-adobe-in-plain-text/

    "Adobe's Digital Editions e-book and PDF reader--an application used by
     thousands of libraries to give patrons access to electronic lending
     libraries--actively logs and reports every document readers add to
     their local "library" along with what users do with those files. Even
     worse, the logs are transmitted over the Internet in the clear,
     allowing anyone who can monitor network traffic (such as the National
     Security Agency, Internet service providers and cable companies, or
     others sharing a public Wi-Fi network) to follow along over readers'
     shoulders.  Ars has independently verified the logging of e-reader
     activity with the use of a packet capture tool. The exposure of data
     was first discovered by Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader, who
     reported the issue to Adobe but received no reply. Ars has also
     reached out to Adobe for comment with no response."

 - - -

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren at vortex.com<mailto:lauren at vortex.com>): http://www.vortex.com/lauren


--
-*- Dan Comden                       danc at uw.edu<mailto:danc at washington.edu>
    Access Technology Center   www.uw.edu/itconnect/accessibility/atl/<http://www.uw.edu/itconnect/accessibility/atl/>
    University of Washington      UW Information Technology

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