Stories about Hardware Locks, Dongles and Security Keys

Whatever the problem, you are not alone

Although some people use hardware lock devices without ever encountering problems, not everyone is so lucky. SafeKey International has collected letters from companies and individuals who have experienced hardware lock problems directly and wanted to share their stories with us.

In a perfect world, no one would ever have to worry about their hardware lock device causing problems. (Hey, we're working on it. :) But as these hardware lock stories show, sometimes dongles do cause problems. And when they do, it can really affect your business.

If you've never had any problems with your hardware lock device, you might want to consider these lock stories as a whisper of warning. The problems these stories describe might never happen to you, and we hope they never do. But we also hope these stories help prepare you for what could happen, so you'll be ready if ever a lock disaster does strike.

And if you have a hardware lock story of your own to tell, write us a letter, fax us or email us at sales@safe-key.com and we'll be happy to add your story to the growing list of testimonies on these pages.

I work for a sheet metal manufacturing company in Canada and we use a CAD/CAM software which requires a hardware protection dongle. We recently had a break-in and lost our dongle in the process. The CAD software company charged us an arm and a leg for a replacement - even though we gave them a copy of the police report. Prior to that, our previous software also used a dongle and refused to work after a while for no apparent reason. Although they replaced it for free, we had several days of down-time at significant cost.

A.O. - Canada

I am very satisfied with your program, it has saved us a lot of problems when our company location burned down and the original keys was in a bank deposit!

B.D. - Denmark

We are currently looking at purchasing a software package from France that uses a certain brand of dongle. Their replacement policy is such that if one of the dongles breaks, they won't give you a new one even if you ship back the old broken one. They require you to purchase a NEW copy of the program and the shipping time from France is not guaranteed to be quick. Seeing as how each of their dongles is a single user license, this policy of theirs is too restrictive to be practical.

M.H. - United States

We are looking for a company to permanently delete hardware key "dongle" based protection on some software we wrote many years ago. The batteries in the keys are failing and we can't get replacement keys as they are not being made anymore.

C.D. - Florida

I am currently working as a civil engineer in a steel design company. We are using two computer programs that have hardlocks on it. There is some kind of a conflict between the hardlocks themselves. If there is one, you can not use the other.

A.P. - United States

I have a customer who currently has a cad/cam application which runs with an old version hardware lock. He nees to move the application to a new Pentium Pro200 and the lock doesn't support the faster timings for the Pro200. He wants to stay with the older version of the Software so the only solution is the have the hardware lock removed. I have been in touch with the software vendor and they will not support the older version with the new key that supports the Pro200's.

R.M. - South Carolina

In the demo package that we received from a software company, I experienced trouble with my printer function because of the parallel port key, but the software people don't seem to care. Their attitude is that we should dedicate one comuter solely to the software, and we will not have trouble with printing functions called by other programs. This is not an acceptable answer, since all of our computers are heavily used for a variety of functions.

J.T. - United States

Your product sounds just like what I need. I have a desk top unit in my home office which runs some engineering software which is locked with a dongle. I have to travel into the field (other states, etc) extensively. Where I use my notebook computer. I've been moving the dongle back and forth between the computers as I come and go. The dongle is getting worn out and so am I. I have to unhook my printer, install or remove the dongle, and I am very worried about losing the dongle out in the field or worse yet showing up on a project and forgetting to bring the dongle with me. That could really be a disaster.

J.W. - United States

I have various software with various hardware locks. I am a contractor working in a unsecured office and have lost one of these before. These are my own software that I personally purchased. Can you help me so I can still run my software and lock up my Keys?

J.R. - United States

My firm has several licensed copies of a specific software. With people taking keys home often, I'm worried about a key getting lost or damaged. Not to mention programs no longer working due to conflict from stacked dongles. We've already damaged a key by plugging an external tape backup into it.

C.H. - United States

Do you have a hardware lock story to share? If so, write us a letter, send us a fax, or email us at sales@safe-key.com

All text, sounds, graphics and files at this site are Š1998 SafeKey International, unless indicated otherwise.

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