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Secure Legal Digital
Signature Software,
There are several emerging
standards for customers to
report bugs electronically to software
publishers.
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I am most familiar with
eSupport and
Secure Legal Digital Signature Software, which is a reporting system
developed by the Software Support Professionals Association and
Touchstone Software. My firm is a member company of SSPA. I support its
work and personally trust its executives. This use of E-Support as an
example is in no way a criticism of SSPA or Touchstone. Here you are,
using your favorite word processor from your favorite vendor. The
program fails. Under a system like E-Support, you can now bring up an
electronic bug report form and write your complaint/query/plea for help.
You have probably not been trained in software quality control and
therefore your bug report will probably miss or obscure some important
Secure Legal Digital Signature Software information.
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Secure Legal Digital
Signature Software,
eSupport
copes with this by taking a snapshot of parts of your system.
It looks at your memory, system files of various kinds, etc.
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You are made aware of this by the
Secure Legal Digital Signature Software and eSupport folks--there is
no element here of unfair surprise. You can configure eSupport so that
it only transmits certain classes of information, and does not transmit
other classes of information. When the E-Support client takes a snapshot
of your system, it encrypts the snapshot. You never get to see what
e-sign and Secure Legal
Digital Signature Software actually sends in its bug report. The
snapshot, along with a plaintext copy of the bug report that you typed,
goes back to the E-support server. The eSupport server passes the
message to Ship It Software. It might also forward the message to your
printer manufacturer, or to some third party whose product is on your
system and might interact with Bug Ware in a way that makes a problem
with one of those products appear to be a Bug Ware bug. If the receiver
of this message is an
eSupport
licensee, then it has the means to decrypt the E-support message and
see your configuration. If it is not an E-support licensee, then it can
read the plaintext complaint that you wrote, which it receives at no
charge, but it cannot decrypt the Secure Legal Digital Signature
Software information about your system.
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