Hey Kevin and jstrawn,
Thanks for your prompt replies.
The notice that Adobe would report back on my usage was displayed in a transient message when I upgraded all my installed apps using the Creative Cloud manager today. It also stated that the behavior would be "enabled by default" but that I could turn it off after the apps were upgraded.
I guess I could have made a screenshot. But I did not think of that at the time, because I was so unpleasantly surprised by and upset by the "we will spy on you by default, take it or leave it" attitude. I obviously cannot repeat this upgrade now to see the message again.
After upgrading, I could not find any obviously related setting in the Creative Cloud manager, nor Premiere CC preferences to disable this.
Since first posting, the closest thing I have found is in the Help>Adobe Improvement Program, where its states, in part, "Your System Administrator has disabled this feature inside Adobe's products." I assume that's me - I run the workstation - but WHERE did I disable it?
And is my disabling of Adobe Improvement Program the same as having disabled the spying that I was told would happen during the upgrade, unless I disabled it? If so, why was I even informed that it would happen? Or is Adobe still collecting and sending back other information about my usage, without me being able to disable that?
Adobe has not earned our trust, or at least my trust, after the credit card fiasco (not to mention how many security flaws have occurred in Acrobat/Reader in the past decade). As a journalist, my videos mostly end up as published, public pieces. But I sure as hell don't want any metadata, even a simple file name, ending up in Adobe computer, leaking out.
How do the Hollywood guys feel about your products? Are they happy about the possibility of metadata or who knows what from in their dailies and early prod from their $$$,$$$,$$$ movies potentially leaking out?
As a former SW developer of several decades experience, I understand the value is collecting some usage data. But there is a proper way to do that: it is PERMISSION-based, NOT "we will spy on you by default but you may turn it off later" (maybe, somewhere). Also, the best software to do this does so transparently, allow the user to see the actual data that will be sent before it is sent. I recall Eclipse IDE as one example.
Brett