Hi, I am a content addict with literally thousands of bought external runtimes which I need for my comic. The downloading for me is a huge chore - I"ve let them accumulate too much recently. I asked renderosity to burn the content onto DVDs (happy to pay) of all my content but they said they couldn't do that. In the meantime taosoft who is a really amazing programmer made a downloader that I have been testing. The day he made it publicly available it suddenly stopped working. It was the most amazingly useful software - it downloads all your renderosity content that you have bought and puts it into nice organized little numbered folders. He assumes renderosity must have blocked his new software somehow. He wrote to rendersosity two days ago to ask what has happened but has received no reply. He says other messages from other people have had replies. He also wrote to me and said:- "My experience with DAZ is quite different. I've written several of that type of apps for their store, they've never complained or anything. Actually, when I started writing the DAZ Account Manager for their new store back in 2013, THEY actually contacted ME and offered their help, and gave me a lot of useful info about how the store worked, so I could get the app working." Love esther

Does the downloader require the user to supply privileged information like their Poser serial number or login id/password?

I too would be interested in this as I have some content I'd like to back up in an easier method. Maybe Renderosity itself would consider looking at the downloader and either making it an official one, or create their own and release it to the customers? I'd even be willing to pay a small one time fee ($10 if it worked reliably) for the convenience.

I was just notified by Esther that she had started this thread (I wasn't aware she would do that). So I'll try to answer any questions as best as I can.

ironsoul posted at 10:49PM Sat, 02 September 2017 - #4313418

Does the downloader require the user to supply privileged information like their Poser serial number or login id/password?

It needs your login and password in order to log in to your account. And technically that means that it could be programmed to send these data to a server somewhere so they could be used to login secretly to your account and collect files and serial numbers etc.. All I can do is give you my word that it doesn't.

I could make the source code public so people could check it's OK and as such I don't really have any problem with that, but there are problems with it anyway. For example, a hacker could modify the code so it sends your login data to his server, which is very simple, or implant viruses into it, and then put the modified app up for download or sell it, on a website. For the same reason all my apps are obfuscated which makes it so difficult to reverse engineer the code that it would be easier to write your own code from scratch. The downside with this is that obfuscated code often causes false positives in AV programs but that's another story.

I can make an alternative solution which logs in via Internet Explorer and let the browser collect the product data which means there's no way steal login and password, but it's still possible to collect serial numbers and other account data and send it to another server, so security wise it's not a perfect solution. Technically it's not a good solution either and I'm not sure if there is a simple way to automate download of content files that way, if any at all.

BTW, even if I revealed the source code publicly, there's no guarantee that the complied apps haven't been tampered with. The only way to be 100% safe is compiling the source code yourself.

This makes me feel like renderosity doesn't care that i've got a stack of undownloaded content and very slow internet speeds at home, and that if i spend all my free time downloading, i won't have time to use poser or to shop at renderosity.

BTW, another thread on this issue here:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2916469

Thank you Taoz and to everyone who replied.

BTW, I wonder why they didn't block the previous edition (the Content Downloader). It worked fine for over 2 years I think, and many were using it. It was even discussed in the forums here AFAIK so I'd assume they knew about it. It logged in the same way as the new one.

Could the new downloader have triggered a security threshold, if there was an unusual number of users appearing to come from the same IP address it might be interpreted as a hack attempt.

ironsoul posted at 9:08PM Sun, 03 September 2017 - #4313484

Could the new downloader have triggered a security threshold, if there was an unusual number of users appearing to come from the same IP address it might be interpreted as a hack attempt.

You mean many different user names/logins, or many using the same login?

I don't think the server can detect if you log in to the same account from multiple computers if they share the same IP address, but can't say for sure. I have sometimes logged in with two sharing the same IP, at the same time, never had any problems with that.

Made me think though - one person who is using the new version and used it before it was blocked owns a company with 35 employees. He's one of three people who currently have a registration key. I told him he could use the key on as many computers as he likes though I didn't say only one at a time. The key locks the app to the user's account, so all computers with that key can only log in to the account the key is registered for (the free version can log into any account). So he may have given it to some of his employees for use in their work, who knows. If they use different IP adresses and log on at the same time the server is probably programmed to raise a flag. Will ask him...