Hello,
I would like to restrict people using my application to one Computer, so I was thinking about IP's.. but people in some countries get new IP's after they reboot their Internet.. so I need something better to identify the users, like some value that doesn't change until the user performs a format.
Thanks
The MAC address of e.g. an ethernet interface typically doesn't change even across formats (only if the user changes ethernet interface card). Don't worry, nothing to do with Apple Macs, MAC stands for Media Access Control;-).
You will probably need some registration process, so you could tell the user that you will connect to get some update, and in that process send the serial number of the application and the mac address. If the serial number has already been registered then return an error to the user.
Ideally you should perhaps download some needed dll that is tied to a specific serial number and perhaps mac address, so that if the user copies the dll to a different program it will require more work to get it to work.
It depends on how much you want to inconvenience the user as to the best approach, I believe.
Where I specified dll could be any assembly, jar file, etc, that the language in question uses for running the application.