Ps and LrC asking invasive question

[LAMY2017]

Ps Update v26.2 and LrC Update v14.1.1 both ask permission "to find devices on local networks" to "allow the app(s) to discover, connect to, and collect data from devices on your networks."

• What data?
• Why?
• Should I have actually read the latest Adobe EULAs?

UPDATE: Firefox just asked for the same permission, so I'm gonna guess it was upgrading to Mac OS Sequoia 15.2.

[Nancy OShea]

Your operating system's internal security asks your permission to install, update or grant access to products that request it.  This is not new and totally expected.

If you're unsure what it all means, read your OS's documentation on security.

[Conrad_C]

Apple made some changes to macOS 15 Sequoia to try to improve macOS defenses against sneaky malware, but they run into the age-old conflict between security and convenience. There have been articles written about it, both of these are from trusted Mac writers with decades of experience:

macOS 15 Sequoia’s Excessive Permissions Prompts Will Hurt Security

Apple’s permissions features are out of balance

The goal is to make it more visible what apps are doing, but in many cases you see an alert even when trusted apps are doing what they always have, and sometimes what we want them to.

Generally, the way you want to handle these is:

If it’s about an app you use all the time and you know the developer, you can probably trust it.

The point of the message is to alert you if one day, unwanted malware sneaks onto your Mac and tries to do things on your computer or on your network that you don’t want. In that case the message will probably name an app or company you’ve never heard of, and you’ll want to deny that.

When it talks about something like “collect data about devices on your network” that might be legal CYA language for something as simple as an app that needs to remember (collect and save) your printer’s network address and network name so that you don’t have to show it where it is every single time you want to print.

But this is tricky. It’s not hard to be alarmed and click Deny because you don’t immediately recognize a product name. Then you start noticing that some things that happeen across your own local network no longer work, like connections to your printer or your security camera or inter-device syncing. There’s a thread on Reddit about this…

Something has changed in Sequoia in regards to local network privacy settings

Many of the features of Apple Continuity, such as AirDrop, Sidecar, Handoff, Universal Clipboard, Univeral Control, etc. rely on your Apple devices looking across your network to discover each other, and establish local network connections to each other so you can do things like copy and paste between devices.

Sometimes we forget how much our devices automatically discover, connect, and sync with each other on our own local network all the time.

[LAMY2017]

THANK YOU, CONRAD!!

https://www.apple.com/macos/security/

"Your data. Your rules." Sorta not.

[thewellington]

Dropbox somehow managed to be more transparent when that message pops up, stating that they use the local network access specifically to sync to other local computers, because that is faster than syncing to the cloud.  Why can't Adobe tell us what they need the access for?  Why so secret Adobe?  I mean if you are going to act all cagey when Apple let's you craft that message, I have to assume you are doing bad things behind the scenes.  so DENY to you until you can figure out how to be transparent.