This is malware behaviour and I don't think calling it that is an exaggeration.
@packetcat This is why I cringe every time one of my streamer friends says "Oh, it's not working, let me run it as Administrator." No user-level app should even have write access to that file.
I don't use any Adobe applications myself but somebody else on my home network does and I can tell you, Adobe app telemetry is very noisy.
Adobe telemetry domains like the following are amongst the top blocked by my local pi-hole installation which is using the OISD big list:
adobecorp.data.adobedc.net
aepxlg.adobe.com
hbrt.adobe.com
So this kind of behaviour is to be expected from Adobe but modifying the local hosts file is a new low, even for them.
my thoughts on software telemetry have remained unchanged since 2023 since I wrote this:
https://nullrouted.space/2023/02/16/on-telemetry-in-software/
As far as I know the only major software developer that does software telemetry consent right is Mozilla and the way they do telemetry in Firefox.
@packetcat Valve (Steam) is pretty good too: opt-in, with a popup, every time, and a full copy of what they're going to tell the mothership.
@packetcat I mean, both Valve and Firefox collect a lot of other data that you can't easily disable, but at least in the obvious areas where you do have control, you are given obvious choices with clear opt-in. Bravo for that.
(FF's Deceptive Content/Dangerous Software Protection/OCSP responses/DoH stuff can basically log every domain you hit. Valve logs every game you play and for how long, etc.)
@wohali AFAIK, Firefox no longer checks for OCSP responses. Any settings for it in Preferences are gone and I don't see OCSP related DNS requests from Firefox anymore.
@packetcat ah nice, that's a good choice. I hadn't noticed yet because I'm still on ESR v140.8.0.
@packetcat Wait, so there is a team within Mozilla that understands consent? Maybe they can go thump... err I mean impart that wisdom on the AI features group.
@nivex I think somebody had that Talk and some of it is in latest Firefox stable
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls
but IIRC, these "AI" features are opt-out by default so its not perfect
While I'm here, I recently found that Discord is using a newish telemetry domain in their desktop application. It doesn't seem to be used in the mobile application (at least not on iOS).
As far as I can tell, the telemetry call only happens at application start.
The domain is dc-telemetry.net. I don't know what kind of telemetry this is being used for.