Re EtreCheck contacting Adobe- this, just in, from the developer:
"EtreCheck connects to Adobe to check the most recent version of Flash and compare it to what the user has installed. If it is out of date, EtreCheck will print a red warning because Flash is one of the top methods of malware distribution. EtreCheck used to have a similar check for Java but Oracle had a much looser definition of “latest version†and the warning wasn’t useful."
I guess that answers that...