Example System / GV Protocol Security
What are Genius Vision general policy for troubleshooting?
How to get in touch with Genius Vision personnel contact?
How to deal with "license related problem"
What is "unknown group" and why is it related to "out of stock" issue?
The basic idea of the "unknown group"
Remedy for false-positive detection
Revising of Genius Vision commercial license distributor program
Submitting bidding or feedback
Terms for Genius Vision crowdfunding of commercial NVR bulk license
What are Genius Vision general policy for troubleshooting?
As a general policy of Genius Vision, we are not able to respond to any field problems, unless the information provided contains essentials clue. This is designed to counter protocol abuse against the technical support channel. So before one makes any field problem requests, please make sure one have provided enough clues.
Often, in order to gather required clues, spending some serious effort to do troubleshooting by oneself is necessary. These efforts may include:
1. Testing on multiple different computers.
2. Interchanging potential incompatible computer components (including software components such as drivers, hardware components, and internal cabling that connects components).
3. Examine for possible deteriorated hard disks, network cables, and switches/routers.
4. Rule out possible influences from malicious hackers or computer virus/malwares.
In light of the possibilities described above, the local diagnostic effort becomes very important, in which Genius Vision is not able to provide.
How to get in touch with Genius Vision personnel contact?
There are a variety of methods that you get in touch with Genius Vision personnel. However, recently the contact methods to Genius Vision personnel has been abused severely. As a result, it might not be easy for our personnel to give a response to your inquiry. Here we provide some guidelines about frequently encountered types of inquiry and how to better format your question to get a response from our personnel:
- License-related problem: We found majority inquiries about license problem are related to attempts to circumvent Genius Vision license control mechanism (in other words, hacking). Therefore we might not be able to respond. This is detailed in this article.
- IP camera related questions: Please check this article.
- Feasibility inquiry: "feasibility inquiry" is defined as questions like "Can you confirm your software will do XXX or YYY?". Due to the reason explain in this article, we are not able to respond to this kind of inquiries. As described in the article, this type of inquiries need to be answered by field system integrators, and not by software developers.
- Troubleshooting: Please check this article.
- General product technical inquiry: Please use the forum by checking this article.
- Business discussion: In general, we are not able to discuss business with someone who has never purchased any license, hasn't been purchasing a significant amount of license, or hasn't been purchasing for a very long time. Please take this point into your consideration, it's very important to us. If would help if you proactively bring up the topic about the accumulated sales you have contributed to Genius Vision within one year, before we start to discuss any "potential" business.
- Discussion of unclear objective: Every discussion takes manpower, so it would be pointless to discuss a topic without knowing the aim or objective you have in your mind. In other words, each discussion is part of a commercial process. It would help if you describe very clearly what is that you want to achieve and how is it commercially relevant to Genius Vision. We will not engage in otherwise aimless discussion.
How to deal with "license related problem"
Genius Vision license control mechanism is explained in the user manual. We used to have a comprehensive process to help users with license problems. However, this process has been abused severely to circumvent our license control mechanism (in other words, hacking). Generally speaking, this is done by feeding our personnel with false, incomplete, or otherwise misleading information about how or why the license get into trouble in the first place. As a result, we are no longer able to help this type of questions, unless some special circumstances. We are not able to list the "special circumstances" here because it will only be used as a hacking tool.
As a official policy of Genius Vision, the license control mechanism serves as the last defense measure to our revenue. Therefore it must not be compromised in any way. If the license control mechanism determines your license is invalidated, then unfortunately, repurchase a new set of license is necessary.
Furthermore, attempting to attack the license control mechanism will only result in the policy to become more strict, including the possibility that we might shutdown the online payment system once-for-all. So in order to create a better tomorrow for all of us, please do not do this.
Thanks for your understanding.
What is "unknown group" and why is it related to "out of stock" issue?
A small percentage of users report they encountered an "out of stock" issue when attempting to purchase commercial licenses, as the following picture suggests. This is part of the continued effort for Genius Vision to combat the so-called "unknown group". Allow us to explain more in detail as follows.
The rationale
We initially confirmed the existence of the "unknown group" in the news release announced at 2018'10/30. At that time, we have not yet fully grasped the shape of such a group. However, after comprehensively studying a considerable amount of data since then, we are now beginning to understand how such a group works. Thus, an effort is invested to detect and control how Genius Vision software is used, against the malicious strategies conducted by the unknown group. Part of the effort is to control the inventory (e.g. "stock") according to various purchaser information, including the geological area the purchasers are from. However, since falsifying IP addresses is one common skill of the unknown group, we depend not solely on that piece of information. To be clear, if a user encounters an "out of stock" issue, it does not necessarily mean the user is detected as the unknown group. It could mean the license is actually "out of stock", which is a normal business situation and not an "error". It could also mean the user is detected as the unknown group, and therefore received the message. Our strategy against the unknown group is implemented in artificial intelligence and big data. As a common understanding, no A.I. is infallible. It could also be possible that a user does not belong to the unknown group but is detected as one (please check "Remedy for false-positive detection" section below). For security reasons, we cannot disclose or explain which condition the user has encountered.
The basic idea of the "unknown group"
Among the vast amount of information we have analyzed about the unknown group, we have grasped some knowledge of their behaviors. Although we cannot disclose too much information, some basic ideas can be shared with our users. Firstly, the unknown group excels at information manipulation (e.g. feeding disinformation or otherwise misleading information to gain personnel-level control) and social engineering. Their ultimate goal is postulated as to "gain control access to the whole company of Genius Vision". We suspect that the popularity and widespread of our software have made us an easy target. However, if we know what they are after, we can make plans to fight it in order to preserve good user experiences and our honest business conduct. Nevertheless, during this process, the inconvenience may occur. Let us apologize first. For a better tomorrow, let all of us work together to deal with this invisible but rapidly spreading problem of the "unknown group".
Remedy for false-positive detection
If a user does not belong to the unknown group but is detected as one, it's called false-positive detection. We are planning two options to remedy this situation:
- Create a special inventory program. That allows the purchasing of limited items at specified MoQ at a limited time.
- Revise the distributor program. The root cause of the unknown group can easily target Genius Vision, lies in the holes of our original distributor program. Therefore, we are planning to revise the distributor program to be more concise and reasonable. To get an early preview of such a program, please click here.
NOTE: The two options are merely at the preparation stage. This is because some issue (which is explained at 10/10) needs to be resolved first. Until that issue resolves, these options will not actually proceed.
Thank you for your continued support for Genius Vision products.
See also
Revising of Genius Vision commercial license distributor program
NOTE: This is a tentative program and is merely at the preparation stage. Check here for more information.
The current bidding of Genius Vision commercial license distributor program is published at this table:
Genius Vision distribution territories bidding
Respective fields in this table are explained as follows:
- Territory: Territory of distribution.
- Updated: Date of last data update of the row.
- Product scope: Option between "Commercial" or "Commercial+Lite". Distribution right monthly fee differs for different product scopes. Obviously, the second option will be "much more" expensive.
- Genius Vision suggested Distribution monthly fee (USD): The suggested distribution monthly fee. You can use this form to request the suggested fee.
- Highest bidded Distribution monthly fee (USD): The current highest bid of the monthly fee. You can use this form to provide your own bid. However, if you provided a value that is too low, it might not even be processed. This value should correspond to the real market value of Genius Vision regional distribution right. If you don't have any idea, it is recommended to ask Genius Vision to provide a recommended bid.
- Interested parties: Businesses that have submitted bids will be disclosed in this field.
- Remarks: Other notes.
Submitting bidding or feedback
Use this following form to submit your bidding, request suggested fee, or provide feedbacks (questions). When submitting a request for the first time, you will need to provide your basic business data. Subsequent requests will only need Email.
For questions or feedback, we may not be able to respond to the individual customer. However, your feedback will be used to improve or adjust the program. All information will be published through Facebook page or official website at https://geniusvision.net.
See also
Terms for Genius Vision crowdfunding of commercial NVR bulk license
In an attempt to mitigate the severe unknown group social-attack problem, we are trying the Fundrazr, which is supposed to be a trustworthy crowdfunding platform since it has partnered with PayPal. Our official campaign in the platform can be found at the following link:
https://fundrazr.com/geniusvisionnvr
If you have questions that are specific to the crowdfunding campaign, please use the "Contact campaign" function in the campaign page above. Note that, unfortunately, because of the intensive social attack mentioned above, most of our personnel-level contact functions are paralyzed. If you want to contact properly with our personnel, be sure to follow the protocol described at "How to get in touch with Genius Vision personnel contact?".
Following are a set of terms you should agree to if you want to participate in the campaign:
Crowdfunding terms
1. If the deadline is passed without reaching the funding goal, no license will be granted. Instead, the campaign will be suspended and the amount accumulated will remain for the next time of the campaign, if there is any. Note, there is no guarantee there will be a next time, nor can we estimate the schedule for a potential next time. We reserve the right to change the contents if there will be any restart of a new campaign in the future.
2. If you want to receive a commercial license after the funding goal is reached, please use the product option. Contribution without product selection will be deemed as a donation to Genius Vision, which we will appreciate very much.
3. There will be no refund of any kind. One major reason we have altered our PayPal policy is that many attackers exploit the "PayPal refund" function to try to compromise our business revenue. That's why we need to choose a crowdfunding platform to give us more protection.
4. If you are trying to buy a commercial license in this way, you need to be a veteran installer of Genius Vision NVR Commercial Edition. In the past, there were numerous inquiries made about license installation procedures, that turned out to be hacking (e.g. social attack). Therefore we will not respond to any questions regarding license installation.
5. Please read and agree to all "Standard license terms" in the following section.
6. Legally speaking, the commercial license obtained as the rewards of this campaign shall not be construed as a "purchase" of the license. Instead, it is a crowdfunding reward for contributing to Genius Vision. Please be aware that there are slight differences in meaning here.
7. Each contributor who selects to receive licenses as rewards will be provided exactly one license code (called "purchase code" in our terminology) when the funding goal is reached before the deadline. At the time of individual installation, the user will be able to select the actual quantity of license to be installed. The license code serves as the only license validation method. Therefore it is the contributor's responsibility to keep the code secret.
Standard license terms
1. All software licenses, unless otherwise specified, is per-camera-channel permanent license and includes one-year free upgrade.
2. For software license, Genius Vision employees "online license authorization" mechanism. You will receive electronic license code without physical goods. The target computer where you intend to use the software on must be equipped with Internet access at the time of installation. The granted license will be fused into target computer configuration and cannot be migrated to another computer. In the case of computer maintenance, such as OS re-installation, you are responsible to properly backup/restore license information in order for continued use.
3. The effectiveness of the software depends on many factors, including but not limited to: hardware, network, OS versions/patches, other software, and user operations. You have already tested the evaluation version of the software and found the software is suitable for your usage. By purchasing you agree to indemnify Genius Vision from any and all direct and/or indirect damages as a result of using the software that is caused by non-malicious intention. Therefore before you put the "Software" into use, it is your sole responsibility to evaluate and ensure its fitness.
4. Genius Vision excludes the implied warranty of (1)the fitness of a particular purpose (2)merchantability and (3)non-infringement.
5. The "Software" is a copyrighted work and proprietary properties of "Genius Vision Inc." It is a violation of international copyright law to (1)redistribute without proper authorization (2)reverse-engineer the software (3)circumvent license protection mechanism