On 28.02.2010, at 19:04, walktallornotatall2001 wrote: > Now and again I see messages here that folks have found themselves being > cracked. > Then a discussion generally follows about what to do about this... > > What I'm interested in is how do folks find this out?
We do what a user would do: Go to Google and type in the product. If a regular, innocent search query for your product (maybe along with terms like "free" or "buy" or "get") already brings up links to cracks prominently, you have a problem. If legitimate results are on the first page, you're OK. You don't want honest but not very web-savvy users to end up anywhere but on your app's page or reviews of it. If you enter terms like "crack" or "serial" or the likes that people who wanna see whether they can save themselves the hassle of payment processing would use, you'd ideally have no current serials or cracks reachable from the first page. Usually that's enough to deter anyone but people who wouldn't have bought anyway. There may be more cracks and serials out there, but they're uninteresting if user's can't find them. And a few crackers who want a free copy can be chalked up as a marketing expense. In fact, maybe one should go the PS2 hacking route: Sony made the PS2 open for Linux geeks so they wouldn't bother trying to crack it seriously (the smart guys generally want the challenge more than the free games, so if the challenge isn't there, there's less hackers interested in trying). I don't know if it worked out (supposedly the new one is locked down). So maybe give free serials to hackers, so they don't bother trying to crack or keygen? Cheers, -- Uli Kusterer "The witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
