Disabling Sending Stats from PDFViewer

[harsh201]

We are using PDFViewer in our application and we noticed that it sends some stats to Adobe without us enabling it. We could't find anything in documentation about these stats(ex: Eureka:Commenting).

Can someone help us with information on how to disable these stats?

[jenn.kunz@33Sticks]

Same here. We're getting dozens of beacons to "sstats.adobe.com/b/ss/adbadobenonacdcprod,adbdcwebprod,adbadobeprototype". It also seems to load their Launch library (though fortunately, not scoped globally). 
We're doing a proof of concept on Analytics for PDF, and all those analytics beacons are making things messy, and will make the whole PDF Embed API a hard "no" for my financial services client if we can't find a way to disable them. 

[Joel_Geraci]

PDF Embed API is a client-side JavaScript- and WASM-based library and does not make any calls to cloud-based services. There are only three purposes for which it makes network calls:

1. At the time of loading, it calls into a service that validates the client.
2. If given an Adobe Analytics report suite ID by the PDF Embed API integrator, it logs event data for out-of-the-box analytics and a pre-configured analytics dashboard.
3. It logs anonymous usage data in Adobe Analytics.

I suspect it's that third one that you are seeing. Currently, it can't be disabled. You can read more at the link below.

Adobe Document Services Security Overview

[harsh201]

@Joel_Geraci Thanks for the detailed response. Is there a plan to make it configurable sometime in future?

[Joel_Geraci]

Can you elaborate on your concern? The anonymous usage data helps Adobe understand how to scale the product as well as collect performance metrics so they can make improvements.

[jenn.kunz@33Sticks]

For us at least, it's mainly a privacy concern. If a client opts out of tracking, or makes a GDPR information request, we can't fully honor that. All of my clients have been working hard to audit and tightly govern any third party tracking, so they can disclaim it or allow opt-out as needed, so having this one sort of sneak in there was concerning. The beacons do show up in tools like observepoint, and Safari flags it (whereas it doesn't flag our own analytics because we have a firsty-party implementation)- see attached screenshot.

There's also a mild page performance concern- we now have two launch libraries on our site, and 20 hits (in addition to our own) all firing to Adobe when the page loads.

(It also made validating our proof-of-concept very confusing- I thought I had configured something wrong when I saw dozens and dozens of beacons firing to not-my-report-suite.)

[Joel_Geraci]

Ok, Thanks. This level of detail is really constructive and something I can send to product management and engineering.

[Alon5FCD]

+1 on that. we also have a problem with sending users info to 3rd party

[harsh201]

Our concern is similar to jenn.kunz@33Sticks. Our security team will raise concerns on tracking data being sent to a third party. Also along with stats, complete domain name and URL name is also tracked which is a concern to us as it exposes our client details.

[waynev92156018]

+1 - it's absolutely a non starter for us if it's sending to Adobe.

[jenn.kunz@33Sticks]

I think I'm seeing these sstats beacons are gone now? Is anyone else still seeing them?
https://community.adobe.com/t5/document-services-apis-discussions/issues-with-adobe-analytics-integr... talks about another potentially breaking issue, and I think I've discovered yet another one, that you have zero control over what is tracked- something like 6 beacons will fire to your own report suite for every PDF page viewed. 😞

[Sumona Ghosh · Accepted solution]

Please note that we had a patch release last week. With this release, PDF Embed API now no longer gathers anonymous usage data in Adobe Analytics.