Discussion: DAEMON Tools & MountSpace service

[Sway]

Discussion: DAEMON Tools & MountSpace service

[A.Hecka]

Since DAEMON Tools Lite 4.40.1 MountSpace collected information about images mounted via DAEMON Tools

WTF? This build has been released on 05.01.2011! No single word in the changelog about Mountspace!
Fine! DTPro deinstalled, licenses revoked. Switching to another company. Bye DT.

[Sway]

First of all, there was no MountSpace year ago. We just started to collect statistics. Appropriate option was added to DAEMON Tools Lite installation wizard and to its Preferences. Each user was able to disable "Send anonymous usage statistics" option any time. Concerning DAEMON Tools Pro, there was no "Send anonymous usage statistics" option till version 5.0.0316. So no statistics were collected.

[Terramex]

These days people are justifiably suspicious when it comes to "home calling" - especially with subpar notes on that in the EULA.
btw. the typical undifferentiated spreading of unproven rumors and vague suppositions IMO is every bit as annoying as imperfect EULAs.

I would like to know if DT sends (and in older versions sent) the IP address, an IP hash, or some other assignable data.
Where and how long are the statistics stored ?

[oder2]

I would like to know if DT sends (and in older versions sent) the IP address, an IP hash, or some other assignable data.
Where and how long are the statistics stored ?

I'm not a DT employee, as you may know, but I'm a software developer and I can tell you that in TCP protocol it is technically impossible to send ANY DATA without disclosing your IP address. It's just that the server needs to send confirmation about the data receipt back to your computer (this is what makes protocol a reliable delivery protocol) and for this to be possible your data packet sent to the server MUST include your IP address. And if server receives sender's IP address within the packet, it always has theoretical possibility to store it or log it.
There is theoretical possibility within UDP protocol (which is not a reliable delivery ptotocol) to send a packet with invalid/changed sender IP address. But network data relaying software and/or hardware may consider such packet broken or invalid and just drop it and not deliver to destination. I'm not sure about details how such cases are handled.

[Terramex]

Thank you for the explanation.
So only my second question is a valid one.

[Sway]

These days people are justifiably suspicious when it comes to "home calling" - especially with subpar notes on that in the EULA.
btw. the typical undifferentiated spreading of unproven rumors and vague suppositions IMO is every bit as annoying as imperfect EULAs.

EULAs will be reviewed.

I would like to know if DT sends (and in older versions sent) the IP address, an IP hash, or some other assignable data.

Thanks to oder2 for additional explanation! From our side, I can say that neither IP address nor any other data which can be used for identifying of real user is stored. We use special incremental ID to reduce possibility of synthetic growth of statistics for some image. This ID is stored in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DT Soft\DAEMON Tools Pro\MountSpace" registry node. We understand your worries concerning your security, so as I already mentioned above we do not store any information which can be used to identify you by this ID. It's absolutely impossible. Only mount statistics does matter for us to provide you with as much as possible true information. No personal data needed.

Where and how long are the statistics stored ?

Currently all received data are stored on MountSpace server. We expect the gain of incoming data volume in the nearest time. So it is quite possible that keeping time will be limited to one year or even less.

[Sway]

I'm not a DT employee, as you may know, but I'm a software developer and I can tell you that in TCP protocol it is technically impossible to send ANY DATA without disclosing your IP address. It's just that the server needs to send confirmation about the data receipt back to your computer (this is what makes protocol a reliable delivery protocol) and for this to be possible your data packet sent to the server MUST include your IP address. And if server receives sender's IP address within the packet, it always has theoretical possibility to store it or log it.
There is theoretical possibility within UDP protocol (which is not a reliable delivery ptotocol) to send a packet with invalid/changed sender IP address. But network data relaying software and/or hardware may consider such packet broken or invalid and just drop it and not deliver to destination. I'm not sure about details how such cases are handled.

Yes, server gets user IP address according to TCP protocol standard, but MountSpace does not store any IP addresses.

[ecodriver]

The German Website Chip.de (Daemon Tools: Tool spioniert seine User aus - News - CHIP Online) says Daemon Tools always send Information to the Mount space servers. Even if I have disagreed to the use of Mount space service.
Is this the truth (bug or feature)?

[Blazkowicz]

It is not the truth.

[smoochy]

From our side, I can say that neither IP address nor any other data which can be used for identifying of real user is not stored.

Double negative? Please clarify.

[Terramex]

It's called 'negative concord' which doesn't exist in german language anymore (except some dialects).

[oder2]

Double negative? Please clarify.

It should have been

From our side, I can say that neither IP address nor any other data which can be used for identifying of real user is stored.

[Sway]

It should have been...

Ooops... Fixed!

[yorik]

Hmmm...
it seems that thare are no questions regarding this theme except grammatical discussion )
I'm really surprised due to this big-bada-bum. What will happen if such "computer specialists" (like author of source publication) get to know how many information they gave to Internet companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft ...
nice joke! thanks to everybody ))