Warning about HitmanPro business practices.

Not really, I call Microsoft, explain to them what happened and they are happy to solve the issue for me in 15 minutes.
As others mentioned in here, Webroot doesn't have this problem. Maybe HMP should adopt the same strategy. Obviously Eric took care of the problem for him. Which means that there is someone in the company who cares about their customers. Big plus IMO. The question now is whether the company policy will remain the same or will it change.

 

Once you reach so many activations you can no longer activate via the handy Windows Activation.

How can you dismiss one companies behavior in limiting activations, but not anothers? You still have to deal with the hassle either way. How is the MS situation any different than HMP? Its not, yet I dont see a thread on MS's shady business practices.

Why should the company change because 1 customer cant read the activation notes at the time of purchase? Ive been using HMP for the last 2-3 years and have never had an issue like this. Seems like the OP's own carelessness got the best of him and hes blaming the company for it.

 

They could, in practice, do what I suggested - track on a periodic basis connections coming from a particular computer/hardware configuration (not every day). They can refund an activation (i.e. deactivate) automatically when there is no activity for a while from this computer - in the event this was a real computer - all it takes is one update attempt to get it re-registered on the server.

I know at least one vendor who does this at this point.

Not sure, but I think Windows does it too - except in that case only for retail keys and the periodic check is a few months I think.

 

Is it getting to the stage where you have to call a vendor to get permission to format your pc to be sure you are going to be protected by your chosen anti-malware,perhaps piracy may be the issue but the folk using this pirated software would never face this issue:-they are not using genuinely activated software in the 1st place,it would seem they know the ways around the systems so how does the limit on a number of installs counter this?(especially ones done on the same PC?)

 

This is really bad for those of us that rebuild their systems often. Licensing schemes like this become a pain.

>I must note that HitmanPro does not make a complete fingerprint of the hardware

For all I care lock the license to the MB and offer a transfer option if the MB changes, but please don't make it a hassle for the user; having to contact support for reactivation if he is reinstalling on the same hardware where he previously had a perfectly good license.


Al

 

One poster says "Because 1 guy has an issue", I assure you it isn't just me, but I happen to have worked in the software industry in the past, have contacts, and was an old member of this forum. So I figured posting here would get some results - and it did. But how many people simply 'write off' their investment in this product? How many people do this after realizing the normal support vectors won't work for them? I would wager a good number of folks, and HMP users tend to be savvy, and likely do restore/reinstall periodically and would run into this issue.

I have 3 licenses to PandaCloudAVPro.. Those stopped working after the system rebuilds/reformats. I emailed Panda, and was given an amazingly simple, almost immediate method to 'release' my keys. They even authorized me to resell my keys if necessary using this method. Quite frankly - I bought the keys I own the product in Panda's eyes. This was the proceedure given to to 'reclaim' my licenses from my re-installations/hardware replacements;

1- Go to www.cloudantivirus.com.
2- Login or create an account to login (upper right "my account").
3- Once logged in enter the license at the bottom of the page.
4- Once the license is entered, choose "Release license".
5- You can now use the license again on the same computer or different computer, or resell it.

Tech Support Panda US

That's absolutely the best way to handle this in my opinion, and this is similar to Webroots method. Basically with Webroot you create a portal with your license, and every PC is on that portal. Then you can de-allocate/re-allocate all you want, as long as it is within the spectrum of the license. They don't even care if you re-allocate to your uncles PC - it's still your license for X amount of PC's regardless. So I could in theory, purchase 5 licenses, and cover my home, and 2 of my inlaws, and anytime hardware/OS is changed, reallocate. Remember, it's paying customers that will suffer under draconian activation schemes, not pirates. Pirates already circumvented these systems.

Stardock has a very liberal activation scheme. It's somewhere in the area of 20-50 activation calls. Anything to that area, and they assume it's a pirated activation and kill it in their systems. Stardocks assumption (and an accurate one) is once a product hits a pirate site, or torrent cloud it would probably hit that level of activations in a matter of minutes, and be cut off. While legitimate customers aren't hamstrung by it over the lifetime of the product, which might actually be a dozen activation's over a decade.

 

My experience was better, i had reinstalled my pc several times,
(for testing) and encountered a similar license issue.
One mail explaining that the reinstalls were done on 1 pc,
and my key was reactivated.
SurfRight / HitmanPro solved this within a blink of an eye.

Of course the average user, will not reinstall his/hers pc this often.
or knows what can happen.

Furthermore, i think their support here in this forum is great too.
They must spent a lot of time on that.

Maybe it is an idea for the Wilders team to provide SurfRight/HitmanPro with their own forum here.

 

It's things like this that have convinced me some time now, to stop paying money for "activated" software, specially since there is freeware around for pretty much everything.

The pirates remained unscratched anyway, the ones who get punished are those who buy legally. So why pay to be punished...

 

What they try to do here is limit "casual piracy", i.e. sharing between friends etc. Going after organized pirates can often be difficult, and they think money can still be gained this way and it will probably reduce the number of illegal keys out there, so punishing joe average user is a good idea.

I also think companies should also set up a system for automatic deactivation - it makes things more convenient!

 

Why should I have to go through these types of hoops to simply keep my valid license when reinstalling on the same hardware?

My re-installs are all unattended and include preloaded applications. I have no problems keeping licensed applications valid such as VMware, WinPatrol, Paragon HDM, etc. No e-mails, no phone calls, no hassle.

Transferring a license because of new hardware is a different matter and the one-time effort to do that is fine, but the rest just gets in the way and annoys the paying customer.

p.s. I think your thread title gives a bit of a negative touch to all of this and I don't think SurfRight deserves that. I would have chosen licensing instead of business.

Al

 

Lazy programming/indifference. Twister v7, which was developed by a small chinese company, so small, that a chinese member here said "it's a studio really, not a proper company", has this:

You set your activation serial, it activates. If you 've changed hardware, it simply shows you a pop up saying more or less (from what i remember): "hardware configuration changed, the license will be deactivated on the old confuguration, click ok to proceed". You click ok and it's now activated for the new hardware. No emails, no logging in to Filseclab's site and manually change configurations, no declarations of obedience, no begging for mercy because you dared format or upgrade your PC, nothing. It's the least a company can do to respect the NON pirating customers.

If a small company like Filseclab could do that, ANYBODY can. But most vendors simply don't care, they treat you as potential thief and it's become "mainstream thinking", to think "ok, email us". I 've let's say 50 applications installed that activate. If everyone wanted to email them each time, it would be the end.

Poor WinPatrol, i 've lost count on how many times i 've activated in the last month. Probably more than 10 times, because the images i restore, have no security software (to avoid conflicts) and each time i re-install Scotty. I even changed motherboard, VGA and CPU and Scotty still didn't bite me.

 

At the very least, this has caused me to re-evaluate products I own, and re-consider ones I am thinking of purchasing. I simply cannot be hassled with activation issues, it's too time consuming. So any product that has any unreasonable restrictions in regards to activation, I won't be buying them. It was a good learning experience if anything, I actually had not run into such severe activation issues, or licensing restrictions until this. But it has certainly made me aware of the potential of them really impeding product usage. I cannot seem to change the title to "Licensing" instead of "Business".

Edit: Interesting, with 1 account on Panda, I could release all of my licenses. Very good system for handling that, but it could actually be automated as mentioned above with Twister v7.

 

I couldn't agree more. I have dropped completely RollbackRx because of the activation issues. I can understand that piracy is damaging many companies, but I'm not prepared to pay the price in terms of the inconveniences created fighting this problem.

 

I like the idea of having keys tied to an email account and the ability to authorize/deauthorize like iTunes accounts on computers. I discussed this in the AppGuard thread as well and they are going to implement a new licensing system in version 4, so hopefully HitmanPro and other companies start changing their licensing methods as well.

 

You can block RollbackRX's dial home garbage activation system by firewall blocking netreg.exe, or go in and rename that file. It will activate the product offline, and your license will still be valid for the pro version. Nevertheless, it's sad we have to resort to such methods as legitimate customers, right? I figured that one out right away, and it was a major turnoff on the product. But since I got it for 80% off I am not too worried about it.

Piracy is overrated. Want to know the best way for a company to beat piracy? Release constant, regular, and impressive updates to your product. Simply put - crackers can't keep up cracking if you do this, and people will just buy it. A companies target audience isn't of any relevance to piracy. Pirates don't buy your stuff, and never will, regardless of how remarkable it is. Customers who need it, will buy it, they are not in the demographics of the pirate crowd anyway.

All of this activation rubbish is a waste of time. Pirates have already circumvented it, and legit customers are horribly convenienced by it. Just do us all a favor and get rid of it.. Didn't we have enough of this crap with user manual keyquestions, or CD's required to run stuff in the old days? Let's move on.

 

I always stay away from these kind of licenses that have a limited activation count.
Luckily my current "paid" setup does not have these kind of issues, i have reformatted all of my PC's at least a dozen times and have never experienced this issue.

 

I 100% agree. I do however make an exception for lifetime licenses products. I believe these guys deserve more of a break because their income is more constrained.

 

HMP isn't lifetime, it's yearly.

 

i know that is not. that's why they don't get a break from me. but they do provide a great software thou.

 

HMP is a great product.. Sadly, it's not compatible with RollbackRX as it detects things no longer in the current snapshot, and finds stuff in the previous snapshots. It also has issues with Rollback in the MBR, and can destroy a RX installation.

That makes it a dangerous product for me, it can cause serious issues if I am not careful with it.

 

You should run with Compatible Disk Access.

Go to Settings -> Advanced -> Disk Access Mode.

That should work.

 

Me too. I don't have anything per se against activation, if it's done in a way that doesn't hassle me or make me loose my time. As i said elsewhere, WinPatrol and Twister, both activate, but never caused me trouble, no matter how many times i activated or changed hardware.

I am more distrustful in general of activating lifetime licenses of "small projects", because in the past such developers have disappeared overnight leaving no trace.

I am also more supportive of the underdogs and small players, but i 'm simply fed up with activations that shackle your PC or your time. For example, if you want to reset the activation of EAZ-Fix and it's Friday night, you can't. You must wait for them to go to office Monday morning to reset it. Until then, if you want to make an image with EAZ-Fix freshly activated or even a baseline snapshot with it activated, you can't. You have to wait 2 days so that they can email you. I am sick of these things.

I am also tired of asking continuously support emails "what's your activation limits/procedure". If Appguard or NoVirusThanks Pro had offline activation, i 'd buy them both probably. But now i m just tired of keeping track of what limitation each one has. So i basically stick with Twister and WinPatrol, that are both lifetime and hassle-free. Sandboxie i had puchased it when it had offline activation, now it has online with something like re-check after 3 months (never kept it long enough without restoring an image to see what happens)? I don't know if i would have bought it now.

 

Relating to the threadopener, i had nearly the same situation. i was pissed too.
good product --> bad customersupport. maybe someone at surfright will notice what the users think.

 

Sandboxie can be activated offline. You have to go through a process but it is available.

Bo

 

Thanks for the info, good to know. When i have time i will search Sandboxie's forum, i am sure i will find it somewhere there.