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I often use commercial software that is not free, and use the trial version first. My guess would be that it records the trial activation date in a file, and when it detects a certain period of time had passed the software stops working. However, that seem to not be the case; I have erased the whole disk for one time and reinstalled macOS, and those software still displays a message that the trial period is over. Thus it seems like the software collects hardware identification data and stores it in the server. Is that the case? If so, how can I stop software doing that (without my permission), or how can I change the hardware identification data?

Joy Jin
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    Different apps have different methods. It would help to know what software it is. – Wes Sayeed Jun 17 '20 at 04:20
  • Disk Drill, Adobe Creative Cloud, Parallels Desktop/Toolbox, Surge, etc. I can provide more if that might help. (Surge is the main one I'm talking about.) – Joy Jin Jun 17 '20 at 04:24
  • Also ChemDoodle. I'm about to install a trial version of it. – Joy Jin Jun 17 '20 at 04:24
  • @JoyJin about the stopping software from telling servers your UUID, see this answer https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/393698/313842 (spoilers: Firewall). It won't work if they want you to sign in using their app itself. Creative cloud & parallels do that! Also, you won't even be able to download an OS installer without it connecting to the internet. – anki Jun 17 '20 at 07:41

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