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With newaudiotechnology.com we eventually switched to using USB sticks as dongles.

The reason is that we noticed some paying users were cracking it, too, because our licensing system didn't allow dual boot or having a workstation and a laptop.

But our licenses were supposed to be per user and people wanted to carry our software around with them. If setup correctly, the same USB stick is now used both as licensing dongle and it also contains installers for Windows and Mac.



Some people will crack it because they hate dongles. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.


USB binding is fairly easy to bypass. Not script-kiddy level, granted, but it's still a matter of trampolining several API calls and then faking a presence of authorized USB device. At least on Windows.

The reason yours wasn't cracked is the lack of interest on skilled crackers' part.


Or the fact that we updated often enough to make it annoying for crackers to keep up.

But mainly my point was that some of the "piracy" turned out to be paying users who had issues with our licensing system.


Have the licensed crackers started carrying the sticks around?


Dongles don't prevent piracy. Famously, I remember paradox cracking several dongle-secured audio tools that were claimed to be "uncrackable". You may not even need to clone a dongle to do it.




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