Adobe 'eye' to the highlighted document

Software maker Adobe has added a new feature to Acrobat and Reader to inform users whenever they receive a document that has been marked (tagged).

In June, the software developer Remote Approach (Canada) said its product uses a feature in Adobe Reader to track document usage. If the content is changed, the program will automatically send a copy of these changes to the company's server. This will prevent users from creating fake information and help the company determine where their documents are going.

This frightened Adobe because they did not think their products were used that way. Furthermore, this action has turned Acrobat and Reader into a kind of spyware tool.

Mark Phibbs, Asia-Pacific Market Director, said the updated version of Acrobat 7.05 and Reader will display a pop-up box when a document is marked with Remote's software. Approach is open. " Readers will decide if they want to continue reading the marked material ," Phibbs said.

Reader 7.0 can be viewed by Reader 7.0 with default JavaScript support. Detection cannot be performed with other PDF Reader tools such as Kpdf and Xpdf or earlier versions.

Marck Szulc, Adobe's systems engineer in the US, said they also introduced electronic signatures in the software to increase security, reliability and prove the authenticity of the document. The signature uses a private key with encryption software such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard). "If the document is blocked or changed in any way, the signature will be broken," Szulc said.

Adobe is shaking hands with security vendors such as Entrust, ActivCard, VeriSign, RSA and GeoTrust to expand this feature.