Depends on the converter, whether it keeps the Adobe spying features witting or unwitting -- which it may be aware of or not. And whether it has a deal with Adobe to retain disguised. Adode hidden code is quite devious -- for example it may remain hidden to use the converted version as a host germ carrier to propagate itself, following the bio model in our guts to use feces as fertilizer. Be careful about using free products, such as Adobe Reader and free converters of formats of all kinds. They often contain germs similar to the way NSA and other spies implant germs in innocuous programs and platforms -- "free" is as devious as "open" to those who exploit public trust in freedom and openness. Journalism a prime exploiter under the brand of freedom of the press to exploit with constitutional protection. Gmail is one of the most notorious germ transmitters. Tor not quite as evil, but less because newer than the Internet itself, the Internet Archive, Wikipedia, social media, PGP, and many more which may have had noble origins but have been adopted (and bought) by converters of good to evil -- most readily by government contracts, vulture capitalism, desparately broke and in debt, entrapment and coercion by law enforement -- or all of them. This list is beyond good and evil, thus spoke Zarathrusta, aka TCM, JG, EH. Though those gods are dead. Benjamin Brewer wrote:
On Jan 31, 2015, at 8:59 AM, John Young <https://cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunksjya at pipeline.com> wrote:
Swell initiatives by all the Snowden distributors. Except most fall prey to PDF manipulation of tagging, implanting, tracking, by willful intent or by technical ignorance.
It is virtually impossible to sanitize PDFs due to Adobe's inherent design to meticulously spy on use of its products as well as deluded user attempts to hide who, when, what, how by users from creation to modification to wiping to stego to signing to forging to stinging. Image or accessible-text or other PDF formats, locked, redacted, watermarked, et al.
Pardon my ignorance about this, and I will do my own research, but do these hidden formattings/stego/call-home functions disappear, get mutilated, become broken when 'converting' such PDF documents to other document types via use of many 'conversion' tools (Calibre comes to mind instantly) or are these embedded organisms a persistent across any automated conversion routine? Cheers, Benjamin