Plugin 'calls home'

@jeremy2805 – It most definitely does not do that. It contains the functionality for our Paid extensions to do it. They all require it and it is allowed by WP.org to include it as long as its not activated by the core itself as its a dependency.

When installing the paid extensions not available here, you also must enter a license key in order for it to “Phone Home”, otherwise not communication is made.

We have been approved for this same technique in several plugins, including Easy Digital Downloads with over 500k downloads. Approval includes discussion of why that function was included to begin with with plugin approval moderators.

Seriously? Do I have to pull my Little Snitch records? It does try to phone home and I won’t use any plugin that does so without an obvious reason (i.e. making use of a cloud service.)

It may be ‘allowed’, it may happen under specific circumstances, but it is IMO wrong and dangerous.

Calling me a liar and then attempting to justify the behaviour isn’t particularly polite, either.

Im not calling you a liar, but this has come up and been documented before. If you have any evidence of this I would be glad to determine why and how it is occurring, but our licensing and API calls are all built by another company altogether. Used by thousands of plugins on the wp market both free and paid. So you are not just saying there is an issue with Easy Modal, you are literally calling out nearly 20-25% of plugin developers that sell plugins. Thus If there is a problem I want to know about it so that it can be discussed.

But we have been accused before and had the plugin tested by 3rd party plugin security companies Ithemes & Wordfence and the issue would have been brought up then.

Therefore something in your install is not as expected.

PS. Are you sure it was phoning home to us? easy-modal.com. The only other possibilities would be the social share buttons, each calling a file from their own sites.

Yes, repeated calls to easy-modal.com on port 80 on plugin activation.

Since reading about CryptoPHP, I now test all plugins for unnecessary or suspicious network calls before adopting them.

Only during activation? Email me directly or open a support ticket please. No need to clutter up reviews with back and forth. danieliser at wizardinternetsolutions.com

I would be happy to find out why and get it resolved. We in no way wan’t to violate privacy or security.

“They all require it ” They? Who is “They”?

also:

“You are literally calling out nearly 20-25% of plugin developers that sell plugins”

Nothing wrong with that. I certainly feel the repository really isn’t the place for selling things. Even if they are awesome things at great prices. Even if it IS allowed.

And I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Maybe your product is awesome, I’ve tried it and it didn’t do what I needed, doesn’t mean it’s not good or isn’t worth selling, but it’s just not cool to sell crap in the WordPress repository and if you do, you should expect more than a little grief for it. Even if it is allowed now.

@texxs – “They” is in reference to the extensions which use the api to verify license keys and get updates automatically. If you don’t have the paid extensions installed then there are no “Calls home”. Since all of our extensions use the same function, we simply included that function with the core so that it doesn’t have to be written into each extension separately.