>>One problem with the ":phone home" scheme is that such behavior is likely to set off alarm bells.
Agreed; local response was to identify a customer with paranoid "lock it down" tendencies to test phone home mechanisms. Using West Wind wwhttp and user agents set to popular browser, we have pretty good success.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
