Monday, June 10, 2024

Photoshop Users Beware

There's a lot of ink being spilled right now on the interwebs over Adobe's latest stunt; here's a few more drops.

When installing or updating software, with a show of hands, who reads the ToU (Terms of Use) jibber jabber? Usually pages long, our attention to those details are usually left in a dark dusty corner labelled "ignore". Sometimes this is to our detriment, as Adobe users are just discovering.

I'll get to the point: the latest Photoshop end user license agreement (or "EULA") has us agreeing to it being used as spyware on our personal computers! Their justification is to monitor our graphics projects to ensure we're not creating anything illegal. That's like buying a welder, and in doing so, giving the manufacturer permission to have a representative in our shop oversee our work to make sure we're not using it to build explosive devices.

This "viewing" can be by a bot, or an actual human. Imagine some twit in India reporting you for editing an Anne Geddes pic of a cute baby showing their bum, while at the same time viewing ANY photo on your PC. Without your knowledge.

It's a disgusting and abusive use of technology, to which I responded with a seek-and-destroy of all things Adobe on my machine. And, similar to Toyota's emissions test cheating scandal, people still buy their cars, as I'm sure Adobe will still enjoy conning purchasers who will just go "ho hum..."