What is a hardware-id?

Question

Some forums that I regularly visit sell premium programs, and to prevent them from being leaked they use hardware-id authentication. That is, first they send you a program to run to grab your HWID, you tell them your HWID, they store it in a database, then they send you the actual program.

If your HWID isn't in the database, the program won't run. So what is Hardware-ID, and how is it generated? Why is it that my HWID is different depending on the programmer that sends me a HWID-grabber?

Answer 1

A hardware ID is a (hopefully) unique identifier generated from the serial numbers present in such things as your cpu and network card. There is no standard algorithm, which is why it varies between individual developers.

A previous question discussed algorithms.

How to fast get Hardware-ID in C#?

Answer 2

Each program can determine in its own way how to read the hardware ID. Even more some program encrypt the ID before sending it over internet.

Here is a program (also usable as DLL) that can read and show your computer/hardware ID without encryption! http://www.soft.tahionic.com/download-hdd_id/index.html