How can I learn who installed my program on own computer C#

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I write a program in C# and my program windows form application. Application about optical mark reader for tests. I need to learn who installed my program, _ maybe ip adress maybe computer name_ How many times they used. is program licenses or fake. so on. When user open the application or install the application i want to program send my mail adress informations if user use the internet. can i do this. thanks.

What I have tried:

I cant find anything what ı understand.

Posted 6-Jul-17 11:35am

Mehmet Sari52

Updated 6-Jul-17 19:24pm

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Dave Kreskowiak · Answer 1 · 2017-07-06T17:29:00

Solution 1

What do you think you're going to get out of this?

The BEST you're going to get is the internal IP address of the machine that's doing the installation and/or running the application. That cannot be mapped back to anyone, any address, or any company.

You can get the account doing the installation or running the app, but that's not going to tell you anything useful either.

How are you going to determine what is a "fake" license? The only way to do that is to have the app "phone home" every time it runs or is installed.

In order to do that, you also need to be able to deal with firewalls, proxies, and authentication, both at install-time and run-time.

As someone who has done his share of packaging software and deploying it in enterprise environments, I can tell you that the only thing you're doing is making it a pain in the ass to deploy and use your app in a corporate setting. This will definitely protect your intellectual property, but at the rather steep cost of pissing off customers.

Trust me, what you're looking at doing isn't worth the effort.

Posted 6-Jul-17 17:29pm

Dave Kreskowiak

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Mehmet Sari52 7-Jul-17 9:58am

Thanks for answer. Firstly I just want to know people are using my program or not and my program usefull or not. Maybe later if too many people use my program i think sell licence. (i dont know how?) Because of this most important think now for me i just simply feedback from user to my mail or another app.

Dave Kreskowiak 7-Jul-17 10:29am

The problem with sending a mail from the application is that it will depend on the user on the machine actually allowing it. This is normally a security risk and most people/companies won't allow it.

Your "usage" would be better served by allowing the user to pick whether to opt-in to your data gathering or not. If allowed, your app could call back to a WebApi you create on a server to collect usage information.

Mehmet Sari52 7-Jul-17 10:59am

Thanks again. It is security risc really if people is bad opinion.

Can i ask you somethings?

Can I get users allowance for sending information to me or server at installation time. If user give permission installation time once, is computers or firewalls forbid or gives error or warning? Can I get problem for this?

Can I get information if user allow it to my mail adress without hving any server? Is it possible?

Dou you know any example project. Or codes? Or how can i search in internet. I am beginner programmer and i just write one program at 5 months.

Thanks a lot.

Dave Kreskowiak 7-Jul-17 13:31pm

If you're asking if you can get the users permission only once to send the email, no. Outlook, or whatever email application is installed on the machine, will ask every single time your application wants to impersonate the user and send an email as that user. There is no way to get around this.

Sending data by email is ALWAYS a bad idea.

Can you get this data without a server? No. Well, not unless you want your machine to be up and running 24x7, and you can use that as a server. Probably not a good idea.

You're a beginner and this is the first app you've ever written? Scrap all this analytics bullshit and just stick to learning to code. The rest will come later when you're ready.

And as for licensing, unless you're some kind of genius coding prodigy, I seriously doubt your code is worth protecting. That's not meant as an insult. It just comes from lots of experience around other peoples code.

Mehmet Sari52 7-Jul-17 14:37pm

I understand that i cant get data for now. I think my aplication useable. And useful for teacher who make test for own student with optical mark reader for free. Because there are some applicatin for this all of it not free.

I trust my app but as you said maybe i am wrong. Because of this i want to know my app using by people or not. It is useful or not. I will try to get information from people who used to app from sites. But most of people are not write any comment.

If my app whortless i dont want to improve my application anymore .

So i have not anything to lost about it. I like writing code and create something. I am teacher too. Thanks for your suggection. Maybe we will discuss about this topic too many years later :)