Advice on free app and user security

[William Prothero]

Folks:
I have been working on an educational  app that I’m going to give away for free. I think of it as ROI for all the money I’ve gotten in NSF grants over the years. But, since I’m giving this away for free, I’d like to make sure my investment is being used and how much. I feel that, at least, I’m owed the satisfaction of knowing that educators and students use my work. On the other hand, I don’t want to create barriers that will inhibit its use.

So, that said, my plan is to have all new users who are installing the app on their computer, enter a valid email. A registration code will be emailed to that address to validate the license. That’s a bottom line for me. In addition, I’d also like to know if it is being used, rather than just tried. So, my plan is to post a date and name (whatever the user chooses as a username) to an online mysql db. Also, bug reports will be automatically emailed to me. I would also promise not to share the information or use it for anything but rare marketing or update emails and perhaps I could have a checkbox that gets a yes or no on that. I find that unless it is automatic, users won’t go to a social media site or use email to give feedback about an app.

However, I notice that many apps (Apple’s for example) ask for the user’s permission to send this diagnostic information to Apple.

So, I’d like to get some feedback on what you consider the “best practice” for this situation.

Regards
Bill

William A. Prothero
http://es.earthednet.org/