Skip to main content

Adobe PDF Reader 7.0 Javascript Tracking

Adobe Acrobat PDFA hidden undocumented feature in Adobe PDF Reader can track how many times a PDF document has been accessed. It can also log the number of times it was viewed from the IP address of the computer on which it was opened. For the feature to be used, a PDF had to be created, uploaded to the company's server to be tagged, and then distributed.

Adobe Reader 7.0 comes with JavaScript support enabled by default and this enables the tracking. The tracking failed when the PDF was viewed by other readers such as Xpdf and Kpdf, and version 5 of Abode Reader.

The information is submitted over port 80 using HTTP - the standard port for web servers - which no home or office firewall would normally block.

John Hogerland, the technical marketing director for Adobe's Intelligent Document Business Unit, and Mark Phibbs, marketing director for the Asia-Pacific, said they they are unaware of features in the latest version of Adobe Reader .

Source: Adobe unaware of tracking claims

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google