Hi, I am planning to distribute an application in 2 versions: a free and a paying version. The free version would be fully functional but not meant for commercial applications and an evaluation tag would be clearly visible. What I want to do is have the free version also send a start-up ping signal to a server for statistics purposes (the ping would just send the volume ID of the harddrive to a server each time the application is started). My question now is: I intend to inform the user about this ping signal in the license agreement during installation (where the user has to click "I agree" to continue installation. Is this enough? Would this still be considered as bad practice? edit: the application however doesn't require an internet connection to operate (except during registration) and if the user is not connected, the application will start normally without sending the ping.

I personally see nothing wrong with it, although rather than throw it in the license agreement which makes it seem as though you're trying to hide it (nobody reads them), I'd make it an option during install and in the program of allowing submission of anonymous statistics - something like that I wouldn't worry too much if it was already ticked either.

Thank you for your input NewBreed.

Actually the data that I want to send is not really anonymous... the volume ID allows me to identify the user that registered previously. Additionally I don't want to give the user the choice of sending that information or not. If the user doesn't want that, he/she can buy the paying version.
I just wanted to make sure I don't do anything illegal/or not nice to the user.