QOTD : Moral issues

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Socoder -> Question of the Day -> QOTD : Moral issues
Tue, 16 Mar 2010, 14:22
Afr0	My sister's birthday party is coming up, so I'm burning out CDs with Afr0 Games games and merch to promote Afr0 Games. Just wondering... if you make an application 'phone home' for purely statistical purposes (I.E it ticks off a field in a DB saying 'This game has been installed x number of times), is it still spyware? -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork!
Tue, 16 Mar 2010, 14:48
JL235	If all it's doing is pinging a server to say it's installed then no it's not spywear, and is actually very common in installers. Although you might wanna mention it at the bottom of a readme or something. Just ensure that if the user offline during installation or there is some network issue then nothing happens (i.e. the installer doesn't crash).
Tue, 16 Mar 2010, 15:05
Jayenkai	Be 100% honest. The last thing you want to do is put people off your future products because one thing secretly phoned home. And don't buy her a machete. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Tue, 16 Mar 2010, 15:09
JL235	As long as your not storing any info, if it's just pinging a script online that counts how many times it's installed, then I see no issue at all.
Tue, 16 Mar 2010, 15:26
Mog	As long as you're not sending back data, then it's fine. Just give people the option to opt-out of pinging back- some people are super paranoid (even though same idiots are on the web anyways, where things constantly keep track of you) -=-=- I am Busy Mongoose - My Website Dev PC: AMD 8150-FX, 16gb Ram, GeForce GTX 680 2gb Current Project: Pyroxene
Tue, 16 Mar 2010, 15:29
Afr0	And don't buy her a machete. She's gotten pretty good at reading, so I'm giving her all 5 books of Marx' 'Capital'. They need to get this sort of stuff in early (she's turning 11). I'm also giving her a DVD. -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork!