How can I use PHP to uniquely identify separate machines. I would like to use the MAC address but apparently you cannot. I could use $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] but IP addresses change (don’t they?). Also, the page won’t be accessed by a browser but downloaded using a program so I don’t believe I can set cookies.
The purpose of this is to prevent users of my shareware desktop application software from using the program beyond the trial limit on each machine (which could be done by deleting registry entries) – so I would like each new installation to register in the cloud with a mySQL database which will confirm if the machine has not previously been registered beyond the trial period.
Any thoughts?
Well then it’s in the installation program that you should be worrying about getting a value to pass to PHP, not in the PHP script. Consider asking how to get a MAC address from the installation program
– Xeon06