manleystanley opened this issue on May 19, 2012 · 119 posts
nDelphi posted Tue, 22 May 2012 at 4:32 PM
Quote - manleystanley is right.
I don't know about the new DAZ installers, but the older installers were reporting personal information on pre Win 7 machines. After Win 7 came out there was a mistake in the installer that revealed two web pages, showing the personal data that was being transmitted, including the IP address, while installing the product. In pre Win 7 machines there would be a quick flash on the screen, but the customer proabably wouldn't have noticed. It was more than likely a third party company that reported to DAZ the personal statistical information. Even if you didn't run the browser the info still went out. That might be why the antiV pops up for some people, such as manleystanley.
According to Richard Haseltine (Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:09 pm):
Quote - The installers do, or did, check for network access but they don't use it - there's no "call home" element. It is, however, possible that the security software on your system is taking pre-emptive action and so causing the installer to fail.
Usually it is the anti-malware part of the anti-virus package that would warn you. So I grant you that this can cause problems with anti-malware/anti-viruses. Still, a false positive can be ignored when considering where the installers are coming from, it's just commonsense.
I have read a lot on this over the years and I never did see proof that DAZ was receiving personal information from installers. If you have read a post with someone showing proof of this please post the link. Otherwise I treat these as rumors. Many installer packages, including the open source releases, have the ability to allow the developer of a software to receive personal info, many installers include the code regardless if you didn't check a box to setup the feature when creating the installers (this code in the installers could be the bases for all those rumors).
Many software publishers have in the past been hammered when their installers were caught sending personal information and they suffered greatly in the press and loss reputation. Normally, you should always ask the public if it is OK to gather and send this information. Something tells me that if DAZ 3D was doing this in the past it would quickly have been reported and proven and a huge brouhaha would have ensued. I mean, DAZ 3D is getting hammered, as usual, even when moving to a new store engine. LOL!