Adobe Introduces New Tagging Notification Feature in Acrobat and Reader
In June, software company Remote Approach from Canada revealed that its product uses a feature in Adobe Reader to track document usage. When content is altered, the program automatically sends a copy of these changes back to the company’s server. This will prevent users from creating counterfeit information and help the company determine where their documents are “traveling”.
This revelation alarmed Adobe, as they never anticipated that their products would be used in such a manner. Furthermore, this action has effectively turned Acrobat and Reader into a type of spyware tool.
Mark Phibbs, the Director of Market for the Asia-Pacific region, stated that the updated version 7.05 of Acrobat and Reader will display a pop-up dialog when a tagged document with Remote Approach’s software is opened. “Readers will have the autonomy to decide whether they want to continue reading the tagged document or not“, Phibbs explained.
Remote Approach can track documents because Reader 7.0 supports JavaScript by default. This tracking is not possible with other PDF Readers such as Kpdf and Xpdf or any previous versions.
Marck Szulc, a systems engineer at Adobe in the United States, mentioned that they have also introduced digital signatures in the software to enhance security, reliability, and to verify the authenticity of documents. The signatures utilize private keys with encryption software such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard). “If a document is blocked or altered in any way, the signature will be invalidated,” Szulc noted.
Adobe is collaborating with security firms such as Entrust, ActivCard, VeriSign, RSA, and GeoTrust to expand this feature.