Source : http://www.voidix.com
Author : voidix
Published on : January 16, 2007
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There has been some buzz going around lately about Photoshop CS3 and the possibility that it contains spyware. Upon installing the windows version of CS3 Bonjour.exe is also implemented. The bonjour service is associated with Apple and Itunes, and creates a P2P connection without your permission. According to some, this may even slow down your Internet connection. The process itself will show up in your task manager as bonjour.exe or mDNSResponder.exe.
Dispelling the Myth
Some people are quick to judge, and rightly so, lets look into the Bonjour service with more detail. According to John Nack, “The deal is that Photoshop uses Apple's Bonjour technology to make it easy to connect to Version Cue servers.” According to Thomas DeMeo, Director of Product Management, Bonjour was developed to make easier connectivity to version cue servers (a file management tool that is integrated in Adobe) on a local area network. This is a common process used in Mac OSX and Windows alike. This does not setup a P2P connection, nor does it send any information via the Internet. It is a common misunderstanding that Bonjour makes shared services on a personal computer available to the public over the Internet. In reality, it does not allows access, even to those on the same LAN connection. What is actually does is merely announce their existence, a way of locating shared files rather actually obtaining them.
What to Do
Bonjour.exe is not spyware, but on the other hand, do we really need it running all the time? As it stands now, Photoshop CS3 installs the program automatically, and it will continue to initialize on startup after the install. Most likely the best solution for this would be to make Bonjour one of the optional feature upon installing Photoshop, and at least, notify the user that it will be installed.