And only Adobe can explain why the Acrobat plug-in finder launched IE, rather than some other browser. Obviously that isn’t our doing (you didn’t yet have any of our code on your machine).

Our installers are signed with Authenticode, and the anonymous IP is only because we hadn’t yet transfered the fileopen.com domain to that IP. We provide the ActiveX only as a convenience; nobody has to run it, and it doesn’t do any spying. We have a message about that at http://www.fileopen.com/privacymessage.html

Good luck with your blog, anyway.

Do you understand why I first opened the PDF in Acrobat instead of using the Sybex installer? It’s because I (more or less) trust my copy of Acrobat more than I trust any software on the Sybex CD.

Can I take it from your dog-ate-my-homework excuse that you accept that downloads from anonymous IP addresses are bad? Looking at the screenshot above there is no way to tell whether I am downloading from the intended source or not, and hence the trustworthiness of the download is severely in question.

The privacy message is meaningless – there is no way for me to associate that message with the software being downloaded.

But I don’t care about whether or not I can trust your software. It’s the global effects that I’m worried about.

When supposedly reputable companies start distributing their software in this way, and it becomes acceptable practice to download from anonymous IP addresses, it lowers the barrier to entry for all the malware authors trying to get their crap onto our desktops.

I do agree with you that it is bad form, and frankly a bit lame, that our installer is at an IP address. The whole browser-install system is new, as i mentioned; we’re fixing that now.

If you manage to finally get FileOpen working then let me know and I shall send you an email of a company that sells PDF conversion tools that remove the FileOpen DRM controls. This is not some hacking tool (I am not into that) but a legitimate company that converts PDF documents to other formats (so as long as you can get the fileopen plug-in working then once the file is decrypted then you can extract whatever you want from it). I can’t understand why anyone purchases this product. Not only is it a pain in the ass for users to install but it does not seem to provide any security anyway. Maybe companies enjoy giving their customers a lot of pain for no reason what so ever…

Boris

We are in the process of adopting FileOpen… your comments about a legit co having a product that will allow me to convert a FileOpen encrypted PDF into another format causes me some concerns. Can you provide me with the name of the software?

Thanks, Rod

There are quite a few out there. Try LD-Converter http://www.pdftoall.com/pdf%20magic.htm for starters.

Boris

please help me