users of the e-book management software Adobe Digital Editions 4 of are reviewed according to a report by The Digital Reader for some time on their reading habits. In addition, the suspect is said to have confirmed that the software also attached hard drives scanned for digital books.
According to the report, the software maintains a lively exchange of information with the servers of Adobe in which it the ID of the user who ID and IP of the reader used, carries the name of the managed books including publishing, import date and the format together with meta-data, reading time, and the last read page in the book. Especially critical here is that the transmission is in the unprotected plain text and is therefore easy to intercept by a third party. This procedure involves particularly to give some explosiveness, as was exposed before a big security problem year ago almost exactly one Adobe, as unknowns captured 150 million users data.
In addition to not only in Adobe Digital Editions imported books are recognized, but all stored on the hard drive E-Books. This should prove of The Digital Reader published text files that give an insight into the data collected. Users of the Digital Editions version 3 are also affected, albeit to a lesser extent. Even if the fourth generation of the Adobe software was released only last month, is expected considering the widespread amount of information to be enormous.
That particular provider of digital books collect data on the reading habits of their customers, is nothing New – this problem often was, especially when industry leader Amazon already discussed. The fact that a company but without asking the hard drive by searching for more content, reveals a whole new dimension to the problem
Adobe partially confirmed the findings expressed in the accusations, but simultaneously tries to smooth things over. Collecting the data serve According to a company spokeswoman alone checking of licenses and the better implementation of various licensing models for the editors. According to Adobe, the data should be collected only for the currently read book, neither to other books in the collection by other reading applications. Moreover, all actions would be consistent with Adobe End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy. According to Ars Technica , however, find in the agreements neither information on the collection function nor information on the duration of storage of this data.
Compared to the IT portal was Adobe in addition, that the companies are already working on an update of the software. About the content of this update but Adobe had announced no details. Nevertheless, the unprotected transmitting personal information at least in the United States could represent a serious breach of the rules in Adobe’s home state of California, and since 2014 also in New Jersey since 2011 “Reader Privacy Act”, which is to protect the privacy of the reader.
The problem is the lack of alternatives for certain users: Adobe is by far the most popular DRM service available so that users protected with this mechanism Books will continue to be dependent on the software. An alternative are providers of digital books with so-called soft DRM, which focuses on digital watermarking. This rethinking has but just begun when the party first and could, if the way the music industry for DRM-free music is taken as a benchmark, take some time to complete.
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