PDF Creator sends data over network. Why?

Hi all!

So the story.. My organization decided to try PDF Creator for business purposes and document processing. We downloaded free version to try it and check its capabilites. All looked good, but our IT Security engineer said his NO to this software.
He checked it and saw some suspicious activity. PDF Creator sends some data through Internet to address 178.33.77.134. Why? It's offline software, isn't it? Does somebody know, what data are transferred?
So, I have to questions

  1. How can I prevent PDF Creator to connect to 178.33.77.134? Maybe there is some hidden settings?
  2. Maybe business version is free from this unwanted connections?

Hi,

PDFCreator is not offline software and will regularly contact our license server to keep an updated activation (in all paid editions except PDFCreator Custom).
Depending on your settings it will also submit user statistics (as described in detail here: http://docs.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/3.3/en/pdfcreator/pdfcreator-settings/application-settings/general/#usage-statistics) and contact our update server. No sensitive data is submitted in any case. You can however use the offline activation and afterwards block PDFCreator from accessing the internet, without causing any issues.

Best regards

Robin

Hi!
I talked with our IT Sec, but they want absolutely clear version of the software.. Is there any chance to get a version without any statistics collection, etc.? Of course, I talk about paid version.

Hi @sogris
As Robin stated the only version that comes without any kind of online license activation would be PDFCreator Custom. If you're fine with online license check, PDFCreator Business would be an option, since you can disable the user statistics and update settings using PDFCreator Business/Custom's GPOs. Learn more here: https://docs.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/3.3/en/pdfcreator/pdfcreator-settings/predefine-settings/group-policies/

It might also be possible to receive a PDFCreator Custom edition with usage statistics being disabled by default. Please contact our licensing team for further information: https://www.pdfforge.org/contact/pdfcreator/sales