THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:

• EFT v7.4.x and later

DISCUSSION

Globalscape EFT will "call home" to Globalscape for registration, trial information, and Support data. The ability to call home is initiated by the customer, except when in trial mode to obtain pertinent information about the trial.

The information sent or replied is listed below. Additionally, EFT will record the IP address and timestamp for each interaction, including simple requests, such as when you click on licensing disclaimer links. Certain links, such as those to our website, are only used to retrieve a resource.

Activation/Registration:

Customer invoked: To perform a “perpetual” license activation or an initial term “subscription” license activation.

• Information sent:
• The serial number provided by customer
• An identifier for the product or module being activated
• A unique identifier derived from certain hardware characteristics, such as network card MAC address, hard drive, and so on
• Information replied:
• A pass or fail
• If passed, an unlock key and license count (for some modules)
• Alternatives:
• For perpetual licenses, customers can opt to perform a manual activation via email or by visiting a web page and supplying the above information
• Subscription activation is NOT possible via the manual activation method at this time (requires an internet connection).

Automatically invoked: For subscription-based licenses, at subscription expiration, EFT will automatically attempt to re-activate for another subscription period.

• Information sent:
• See above
• Information replied:
• See above
• Alternatives:
• No technical alternatives to online activation.
• Switch to perpetual license.

Trial Reminders

Automatically invoked: At runtime, if EFT is in a trial state, EFT will call home to obtain web content to display in its trial state dialog

• Information sent:
• Information about trial: start/end, state (just started / continuing / expired)
• A unique identifier derived based on the hard drive ID
• Information replied:
• HTML web content for dialog
• Alternatives:
• Shut down outbound network access to port 80
• Default (static) content will be shown in the web dialog

Trial Extension Request

Customer invoked: To request a trial period extension.

• Information sent:
  • Name, Company, E-mail, Phone provided by the customer
  • Obfuscated trial extension request challenge
• Information replied:
  • None (the response is sent out of band and entered separately)
• Alternatives:
  • Allow normal expiration of trial 
  • Purchase and activate a license
  • Generate trial extension request challenge and send via alternate channel, such as email

Support Data

Customer invoked: To send automatically generated information to the support team for troubleshooting problems.

• Information sent is configurable by customer and may include one or more of the following:
• EFT log files (no secrets or passwords; however, may contain confidential values/names, such as paths, account names, filenames, rule names, and so on
• EFT’s configuration file (may contain private data including secrets encrypted with a site key)
• EFT’s server and site metrics database files (non-private data)
• Msinfo32.exe -> SystemInfo output
• Windows Event logs produced by EFT
• All of EFT’s specific registry keys
• Crash dumps generated by EFT
• Any customer declared file paths
• Information replied:
• None
• Alternative:
• Modify the manifest file to pick which info to send or avoid sending
• Avoid using the tool unless necessary
• Avoid sending the configuration file data unless it has been sanitized ahead of time
• Avoid sending the log file unless it has been sanitized ahead of time