Q. How does SoftAnchor differ from its competition?
A. SoftAnchor represents a new type of service in the industry, so there really is no other solution for comparison. To begin with, SoftAnchor is the most flexible and extensive system for license provisioning available anywhere, and it's the most convenient and un-intrusive for the end user. It's also the only solution that gives you license management plus invaluable insight into the types of hardware and feature-usage preferences of your user base.
For the first time ever, you can take advantage of:
- Comprehensive license reporting including activation, compliance, subscriptions and trial status to help you understand your business and drive conversion
- The industry's first reporting of real piracy and casual copying activity
- Robust feature usage data to drive segmentation, packaging and pricing decisions
- Aggregate hardware statistics including installed component, configuration and hardware classes drive system requirements for future releases.
Q. Is SoftAnchor security part of my game or desktop software code?
A. Yes. Unlike some of our competitors, SoftAnchor is integrated into your game or application and not a separate application, driver or "rootkit". Whether you use our SDK to integrate with your source or our injection tool to add security to an already compiled application you control the level of security for your application. And each application or game you protect with SoftAnchor is different, meaning you can deal with attempted breaches on a program-by-program basis instead of needing to create and distribute a global update every time a new crack is found.
Q. What is physical device recognition?
A. It's a unique device identifier developed by and unique to Uniloc that's generated and used by SoftAnchor to "anchor" a user's rights to the physical devices of that user. Unlike a MAC address, IP address, or HD serial number, which are simple sequences and easily spoofed, a SoftAnchor Device Fingerprint is based on the inherent, naturally occurring inconsistencies of a digital device. For example: Hard drives have highly unique damage maps; variations in silicon ensure that no two CPU, RAM or video chips are the same. SoftAnchor uses imperfections such as these to uniquely identify devices with more accuracy than human-DNA identification.
Q. Why is physical device recognition better than industry-standard fingerprinting?
A. Because it builds tolerance into the methodology. Most "fingerprinting" solutions make use of one or two identifiers (e.g., HDD serial, MAC address), so that when a user changes a single component or reinstalls the operating system, those fingerprints identify the user's machine as a new one. SoftAnchor's Physical Device Recognition fingerprint takes so many different sampling points that you can change up to a certain percentage (as set by the developer) of the system or the system's "DNA" without SoftAnchor deciding that it's a different machine.
Q. What if an otherwise good customer installs our software on multiple machines?
A. SoftAnchor lets you distinguish between relatively harmless overuse and actual piracy. You can set rules within SoftAnchor to limit the number of times a single copy of your software can be installed on different machines. Once a customer reaches that limit, you'll be alerted and can offer the option of changing a full version to a trial version. You also have the option of setting a threshold where copying has evolved into piracy. This lets you identify genuine threats without offending legitimate users by locking them out of their software until they've contacted your customer service department.
Q. We spend too much time creating new SKUs and licenses. Can SoftAnchor help?
A. Yes. SoftAnchor makes it simple to create multiple SKUs and licenses from one build, and you can use SoftAnchor with any licensing scheme.