Software pirates pinpointed on Google Map

[vDD+wR]

A company called V.i. Laboratories Inc. is proposing a new approach called CodeArmor Intelligence, which embeds stealth algorithms inside programs that "phone home" with information about the unauthorized usage of software, including their Internet domain and even a company location on a Google Map

Source:
EETimes.com - Software pirates pinpointed on Google Map

Since there are services such as sexoffenders.com or spotcrime.com out there, it's no surprise that companies jumped on the train to catch the 'pirates' too. But this leaves many questions unanswered: What further details about the person are collected? Where else will the data about the people be saved? (since the location of the Google servers are unknown) Can those methods be combined with the current data privacy laws? In my opinion, this is a really questionable approach of identifying copyright infringements...

Do you feel the same? Or what are your opinions on that controversial topic?

[nextor]

I mean, how much information can they actually get. A lot of that is classified isn't it?

[splicer]

Depends on where you live; if you're in the UK you've got the Data Protection Acts to help you out, and I think there was some EU privacy legislation, but I can't say for sure.

[slikrapid]

well, they can't send much data unless you allow it (firewall exception) or through cookies

scene released software usually prevents from calling home or such issues are explained in their nfos

there are many users/groups that monitor what kind of information is being sent when calling home

open source programs can be monitored easier than closed code software

try to avoid using fresh software that hasn't been out for lets say less than a month until it is 'verified' to be safe and if there is evidence of stealth code such news travels fast over the net so it won't be a secret anymore

competition is strong these days so there are always safer alternatives

[nextor]

Ye, I guess you have to trust the big scene releases out there. But then again, there are a lot of appz that are never released by the scene and as you might expect; a lot of the "random" releases got some kind of trojan in them. But I have never seen anything of this as a prob and it's nothing to worry about imho.