Ijack :
Remotely accessing someone's computer without their permission is a criminal offence. I doubt that anyone here would wish to be party to a criminal conspiracy.
I kinda figure that much. The situation is a little hard to explain.
Let's say you have a client that you program and install a bunch of software for. Then they want to drop you and go with another company to maintain/program that software. It would be nice to be able to lock that new contractor out of the work I did. If they want to bring in another contractor that's fine, but he shouldn't be able to profit off my work.
I was thinking that a better way to do it might be to encrypt the files that the software uses, so that if they try to copy the files that the files would be useless. But I'm not sure if the software would work properly if certain files were encrypted.
So it's not necessarily that I want to disable the software from working, just disable a new contractor from being able to work on the stuff I did. If a new contractor does come in, then they'd be required to recreate all the programming I did from scratch on their own. Which is fine, you steal a customer of mine, then you do all the work yourself.
(By programming I don't mean actual computer programming, just programming done inside the software package that I installed on the client's machine)
What I'm talking about is certainly a grey area. What I want to do, I seriously doubt is illegal. And I believe it can be done a few different ways.
Another way, but I don't know if it would work is to password protect certain .exe's included in the software. There's a "programming" mode that only contractors really use. If I could figure out how to password protect that exe from opening up that would be nice too.
I'm just scratching my head trying to figure out a way to protect my investments because sometimes things happen where a customer would refuse to pay me the rest of what they owe me and bring in a new guy. Then I end up having to take them to court and that's a nightmare. So if I could simply lock out the next guy from my programming that would be pretty awesome.