When I log into Amazon.com, my Adobe 4.0 reader briefly starts up, then goes away. Should I be concerned?

I use Zone Alarm free firewall and have run Adaware, SpyBot S&D, Spyware Blaster and HijackThis (all thanks to advice here).

Also, for some reason I get pop-ups targeted to my locale, even though I use a very large regional ISP (Verizon DSL) with dynamic IPs. How do they know where I am?

Thanks in advance.

Why do you still have 4.0? The reader is free, upgrade to 7.0. Even though Verizon is large, they probably assign IPs to specific areas.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

Why do you still have 4.0?

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Not quite sure, I use Windows 98 and that's the one that seems to be compatible.

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Even though Verizon is large, they probably assign IPs to specific areas.

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And they disclose this to advertisers?

Go to Adobe.com, for Win 98 5.05 is the latest version. For Win 98SE its 6.01.

I don't know what Verizon does. Its possible they do, its also possible, that you have some cookies that indicate your location. Did you ever go to a store site and search for a store location by putting in your Zip Code? Get a weather report?

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

Go to Adobe.com, for Win 98 5.05 is the latest version. For Win 98SE its 6.01.

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Thanks. 5 is better and doesn't seem to open inadverently.

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I don't know what Verizon does. Its possible they do, its also possible, that you have some cookies that indicate your location. Did you ever go to a store site and search for a store location by putting in your Zip Code? Get a weather report?

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Yes I have my home page set to the Weather Channel with my zip. Are outside advertisers privy to that? Any reason for concern?

There's no reason to worry about the privacy from that... the IP you have is associated with a general location. Think of IPs like a phone number... if I tell you my phone number, you can make an educated guess as to where in the world I am, even though you can't narrow it down all the way to my house without quite a bit of effort.

What James said. Advertisers are simply reading the Zip in your Weather Channel cookie. They are unlikely to be capturing this information and even less likely to be associating it with you personally. The cookie is ready, scripts are run which pull out zip related ads to display, but nothing is stored. If you changed the Zip stored you might see ads for a different area.

Thanks again.