I'm about to develop a new licensing strategy for customers who buy cds. The customer will get their packing slip / invoice with a box at the bottom of the page, with their details (name, address, email address) and some sort of license code. The idea being that they have to type the contents of the box into a matching screen in the program.
My issue is how secure will the licence code (shown in the box) be? I mean it has to be tied to the the customer detail and the product itself.
I don't want to make this process too difficult. Although it already sounds a little difficult. Also, I don't want to make the code too long.
I do think its worth putting a degree of effort into this, otherwise anyone with a programming language could easily figure out how to build the code.
I don't like Blues approach were he gives people a key, I definitely want to tie in their personal details.
Thoughts?
By JM
The problem of license/ unlock codes is a difficult one. After a lot of thought and paranoia - mainly from other people - I took the view that the code should be simple but not too simple.
ReplyDeleteI encode the user's details - email, address - into a code that unlocks software. For support queries I then ask for the unlock code. The system is not foolproof and could be cracked but I take the view that if someone really wanted to crack it they would anyway. Also the market
audience isn't technically aware on the whole and the product is cheap enough to not encourage cracking (I hope!).
In time I might code in purchase dates to allow people to claim free updates for a year say, or to allow people to claim free updates to the next minor but not major version number change.
I think your right, having their details is the best approach.
ReplyDelete