Can't be used offline because it periodically checks the license validity online [other]

[YBPN]

After buying and activating Mac Mouse Fix, it will eventually disable itself and ask for payment if it can't periodically confirm the license online, apparently.

You can't take your computer to your internet-less getaway and keep using Mac Mouse Fix. You'll also need to whitelist it if you use apps like Little Snitch or Lulu to manage your apps' internet access. That's all I wanted to say.

[noah-nuebling]

Hey @YBPN thanks for your feedback!

This is not intended behaviour. The app does validate the license over the internet everytime it is started, but if you're offline or you block the connection with Little Snitch, it should keep working as normal - indefinitely. I just looked at the source code again, and I can't see any mechanisms to 'unlicense' the app if it can't connect to the internet for a period of time.

So I don't know why you're seeing this behaviour. You might have run into a bug or an edge-case.

I also plan to improve the code in the future, so the app would only connect to the internet once, when you activate the license for the first time, and afterwards it would be able to validate the license offline.

This is mainly over privacy concerns. If you're concerned about privacy, I would actually recommend using something like Little Snitch. Information about the internet requests that Mac Mouse Fix makes whenever the "Mac Mouse Fix Helper" app is started might be recorded by GitHub or by Gumroad or by whatever provider they use to host their web content - probably Microsoft or Amazon.

The information that Mac Mouse Fix sends which they might be able to store includes:

• The time of the request - From this, they could infer, when Mac Mouse Fix was enabled or the time your computer was booted up while Mac Mouse Fix was enabled.
• Your IP address
• The fact that Mac Mouse Fix is running on your computer
• Your license key

Now from my understanding, the thing that is pretty concerning from a privacy perspective, is that Gumroad could correlate your license key, which Mac Mouse Fix sends along with it's request, with any information that you entered when you bought the license key on Gumroad.com. This includes your email address and payment information.

I'm currently talking about this to Gumroad, and they said, that they store logs about these requests for 1 year. However, they haven't confirmed yet, whether or not they store your license key in these logs - which is the piece of information that could be correlated with personal info.

I plan to address this soon with an update to MMF that reduces these internet requests to a minimum. I'd also like to update the Readme here on GitHub to make this stuff transparent and easily accessible to everyone, but I'm not sure how long it will take me to do this.

In the meantime, I advise anyone who is concerned about this, to use an app like LittleSnitch.

Also, I'm sorry. I should have informed myself better about the privacy implications of these internet connections that “Mac Mouse Fix Helper” makes every time it starts up. As far as I remember, I programmed it this way because it was the easiest way to make it not totally trivial to circumvent the licensing mechanism. And I didn’t really consider that API requests, that don’t send any personal data and that are sent over https could still have such privacy implications. But, as I mentioned, I plan to build a better system that reduces the internet connections to a minimum. In the mean time I recommend an internet blocker like Little Snitch to anyone who is concerned about this. I'm sorry for not handling people's privacy with as much care and thoughtfulness as I should have.

[noah-nuebling]

Oh by the way, if you'd like a refund, please send me an email!

[19X17]

Just want to say I just encountered this exact behavior too so this definitely is not some edge cases and I would really love to see this one fixed.