[Freeware] Better Understanding EULA with EULAlyzer

EULA, end user license agreement, is the legal weapon that covers the software vendors’ ass while maintaining the level of boringness that drives anyone who reads it crazy. No one wants to read pages and pages of boring text from a tiny window that requires a lot of scrolling before installing a program. We all end up just agreeing it without bothering to read it through. And unfortunately, a lot of times, we regret that we should have read it before letting the program get into our computer.

EULAlyzer is a secret weapon invented to help us to better understand the license agreement that we ought to read if we intend to install or use their software. It discovers if the software displays pop-up ads, transmits personal information, and uses unique identifiers to track you in a detailed listing within seconds of analysis. And it’s FREE.

Installing EULAlyzer is simple and straightforward. It can be up and running within a couple of minutes. The program can be launched right after the installation process.

To start analyze a copy of license agreement, copy the whole text and paste them into the big text box in Analyze tab. And click Analyze button. You can also the capture icon to capture the agreement text but copy/paste is simpler and easier.

The result shows up almost immediately with a few categorized items listed in the results window. You can quickly glance through and see if there are any interesting facts hidden in there. You can save the result in the program for further references.

It also provides a statistics report showing how many analyses have been done and how many interesting words or phrases have been found so far. Though, it seems to me not providing much useful information.

EULAlyzer is free for personal and educational use but also offers a commercial Pro edition that costs $19.95USD per year to cover 1 PC. The Pro edition includes an advanced protection called EULA Watch that automatically detects most license agreements at install with instant results without you having to do a thing. It works on Windows platform, from Windows 2000 and above, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

Verdict

EULAlyzer could be your secret weapon to cut all the crap from a boring license agreement to reveal what really matters to you. Personally, I appreciate the work done by the folks from Brightfort for making this useful tool trying to help all of us overcome the license agreement pitfalls.