>I am in the final phases of a little vertical market app. The plan is offer an evaluation download.
>
>At some point, the activation "scheme" will transact with a server (i guess), but for now my plan is to keep it simple and I would appreciate any feed back, advice or warnings!
>
>The users will be home-sales-consultants. The OS will be late Win2K(maybe) and XP Home/Pro.
>
>After install and at first start-up, the app will generate a key. Information collected by CDO and userinfo will be sent "outside" the user mail client using code very similar to the DLL sample "SendMail.PRG" on wiki.
>
>The SMTP will mail me and the user's email account from the users email account and user's smtp.server.com!:

>oCDO=CREATEOBJECT('CDO.Message')
>cServer = oCDO.Configuration.Fields(15).UnderlyingValue && User's smtp
>cSender = oCDO.Configuration.Fields(13).UnderlyingValue    && User's email
>cRecipient = "myemailaddress@.....", cSender &&(me and the user get a copy)

>
>The user will accept to send the information. Following the send, the user and I will recieve an email with a subject line "Your activation key", and will include in the textbody the activation key (generated at first start-up) and the info collected by CDO and userinfo functions.
>
>It boils down to the user is really mailing themselves and me a "key" that was generated when they installed the system.
>
>It's cheap - SMTP is stealthy - it works - am I missing anything?
>Thanks

I think you do. How can you be sure cServer, cSender lines do not error and return valid info. I don't know the answer. Just tested and it errored:) But don't count on me I could never succeed using CDO, always had some kind of error (my settings are not usual, maybe for that, though it works -and it works with wwIpStuff- Outlook can never complete its tests as successfull).

Assuming it worked. You're sending back an activation key? What prevents them from copying n times on different boxes with the same key. Or if you're not sending back but generated and sent to you, they simply do not set 'outgoing' email server.
Cetin