Subsequently, Macromedia has released a patch to correct this problem. According to Macromedia, the URLs were collected to determine the most popular sites employing Shockwave animation. Macromedia would then offer its assistance to those sites in making their animations smaller and faster with the aim of exerting some quality control on Shockwave implementations. Furthermore, only two employees at the company have access to the information. I suppose such comments are volunteered to make us sleep easier.
Data collection seems to be the norm amongst developers.
Some include code to confirm the identity of product users , and others include code to let them know the sites an individual frequents. Other companies, including the one that is synonymous with William Gates, use their products to routinely and surreptitiously collect information that violates the privacy of the user. According to information provided by MacInTouch , users of Microsoft Word 98 for Macintosh are at risk. That is, Word 98 documents can include, hidden from view, data completely unrelated to the document and never inserted by the user. Sending a Word 98 document to someone else thus can reveal random private information from your computer system without your knowledge.