Hi I posted this question in a thread in hot deals, but did not want to end up hijacking that thread. After posting I hunted around a bit and found a thread at DSLreports.com that discusses the Bricks coupon printer. I just thought I would throw this out here to see what the FW community has to say.
SnowyOne said: Ha! That's what you think! Try mask this data Coupons inc. collects to identify 1. The serial number of your hard drive, 2. The bios version of your motherboard, 3. The bios manufacturer of your motherboard, 4. The bios element id, 5. The windows cd key which was entered when windows was first installed on your computer, 6. The windows product id stored in your registry 7. and the windowsnt digitalproductid stored in your registry.I won't worry about this so much. Although I hate programs who do this, but for Bricks, there is nothing it can do except ensure that others won't abuse coupon limits by comparing this information with same computers. What is Bricks going to do with this information? ...create a mass network of computer clones to take over the world?
If you are still concerned about super-sensitive hardware information, you can run this application on a junk computer. If you are concerned about operating system alteration, just install Bricks in a sandbox (like Sandboxie) so that Bricks can't change anything to your computer.
Again, you will need a 32-bit OS (unfortunately, no 64-bit support) to run Sandboxie.
I'm not entirely worried about it, but it does give me pause when things pop up with the "Just install this software" to do something that really shouldn't be its own app.
Right now I am running Bricks on a spare PC, but I wonder about its safety in part because I would send a link to the coupon to friends. I don't like telling other people to do things that I am not comfortable with myself, and my friends are not PC literate enough to run the app in a sandbox, or on a junk PC. The part I worry about is condoning saying yes to things like this, that want to run on your machine, to my less computer savvy friends. I tell everyone one that the safe approach is generally to "Just Say No" whenever something on the PC asks to run an executable, so I just don't like having to say yes to this (to save a buck on some light bulbs). It shows how cheaply my principles can be bought, and if my friends figure that out, I will have $5 more in my pocket, and no more morals left.
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