Home/ Questions/Q 3697672
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-19T04:53:18+00:00

I’m creating a simple license key system to keep honest people honest. I don’t

  • 0

I’m creating a simple license key system to “keep honest people honest”. I don’t care about especially stringent cryptography.

If they get to annoyed with the demo limitations, they go to my registration website, pay, and give me their email. I give them a license key.

I’m keeping things really simple, so:

license_key = md5(email + "Salt_String");

I have PHP and C# functions run that same algorithm and get the same key.

The problem is that the output of these functions is a 32-character string like:

A69761CF99316358D04771C5ECFCCDC5

Which is potentially hard to remember/type. Yes, I know about copy/paste, but I want to make it REALLY easy for all paying customers to unlock the software.

Should I somehow convert this long string into something shorter?

Lets say I use only the first 6 digits, so: A69761

There are obviously way more cryptographic collisions in that, but will it matter at all in practical use?

Any other ideas to make the thing more human readable/typeable?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    To left 6-10 symbols will be enough – the user anyway will not be able to guess the code, and it would be easy to type in.
    Also good idea would be to register each license on your server, so that you will be able to check that user is really honest, and didn’t give a license key to another person.

    • 0