They may be a day late and a dollar short, but Adobe has finally responded to yesterday’s news that they were using the Digital Editions 4 app to spy on users.

Adobe hasn’t addressed all of the evidence against them, but they did admit that they were gathering info from users. They won’t admit to scraping my library, but they did admit to tracking a user’s activities. Adobe claims that it was covered by the their privacy policy and by the TOS for the app:

Adobe Digital Editions allows users to view and manage eBooks and other digital publications across their preferred reading devices—whether they purchase or borrow them. All information collected from the user is collected solely for purposes such as license validation and to facilitate the implementation of different licensing models by publishers. Additionally, this information is solely collected for the eBook currently being read by the user and not for any other eBook in the user’s library or read/available in any other reader. User privacy is very important to Adobe, and all data collection in Adobe Digital Editions is in line with the end user license agreement and the Adobe Privacy Policy.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see how sending a user’s reading history in clear text over the web could possibly be in line with a privacy policy.

On a related note, I took some time today to read the TOS for Adobe Digital Edition 4, and I do not see where it gives them permission to track user behavior, much less upload said tracking data in the clear. What’s more, I have also heard from a couple other techies who also read the TOS and were unable to find mentions of this program.

Update: Robert has pointed out in the comments the relevant section of Adobe’s privacy policy, which you had to find on the Adobe website, and not the TOS I agreed to when I installed ADE 4.

I have asked Adobe for an explanation on this last issue, and I will update this post if they respond. Sadly, I don’t expect that to occur; Adobe has not responded to my emails on this issue (I got this statement second-hand from Rich Bellis of DBW).

Update: I am in discussion with Adobe on this and other issues.