Oh dear Adobe - what are you playing at?

[beren_writes]

According to the articles linked below Adobe Digital Editions 4 takes information about any ePub you put in your library (including ones that have no DRM so are nothing to do with them) and sends it in plain text, over the internet to their server.

Adobe is Spying on Users, Collecting Data on Their eBook Libraries

Adobe’s e-book reader sends your reading logs back to Adobe—in plain text

Adobe Digital Editions caught calling home with user logs

This is very worrying.

I used to use Digital Editions to check my ePubs when creating them for Google, but I've now swapped over to a reader called Bluefire which doesn't send information places. I also use Calibre for most things, but like to have a backup for file checking. I don't think I had any trouble actually, because I'm still on Digital Editions 1.x :), but I'm not taking the risk.

Why does it need to know what page you read when just to do DRM checks - which is what they are claiming?
and
Why is it sending all the info in plain text where anyone can read it?

Of course it is possible that it's simply really, really lazy coding and no one could be bothered to put in an if clause to check to see if the book was actually DRM enabled and add in an encryption algorythm ... but given that there seems to be overkill on the data, I'm doubting it.

I dislike DRM intensely anyway. Pirates can remove it in seconds (even I know how to do it so professional pirates can do it without blinking), so it's useless for that, so all it does is piss readers off. And it also gives sellers a hold over the reader that is just plain wrong - Amazon deleting people book libraries anyone? I don't like being told I don't actually own something I paid for when if it was on paper I would.

Yes you need some way to track library books, but recording what page you're reading and in what order seems very dodgy to me - how is that anything to do with, have you had this book longer than x no of days? Also, some people are reporting that if you add a false host to your host table for the server Adobe are sending to for the logs, the library lending part still works fine. Not sure how that works as all about DRM then?

The only time DRM is ever on books by Wittegen Press is if the publishing platform has added it without our permission (W.H.Smiths used to do that before they went nuts and removed all self-pub books and I think Apple do - but I've never successfully opened a book from iBooks so I wouldn't know). Sometimes we don't get a choice, but on places like Amazon and Smashwords and Google where they ask first, we make sure it isn't added.

Comments

[moth2fic]

That's worrying - thanks for the heads up! And don't forget to update us if you hear anything further about people calling them on their stupidity/spying!