Question about Patreon Supporter Certificate [solved]

boxinator

boxinator

New member
I like Sandboxie-Plus. Do not need any special features, just needing to run some tools in several instances side-by-side.

So today, to encourage the ongoingness, I paid for an entry-level Patreon contribution. I made it an annual payment, to keep things simple.

I managed to enter my Supporter Certificate into Sandboxie-Plus as per instructions. And the field turned green. And I received a brief thank-you pop-up.

Sadly, at the bottom of the settings-window, I see a note: "Expires in 89 days" 😝

My feedback is this: I just paid for one year (365 days) to encourage the team. And to get rid of the nagging-pop-ups in a positive way. Now I do not want the trouble to log in to Patreon (where I have never been so far, and have no need for yet another "community") and to grab a fresh Supporter Certificate every 89 days. If you want to be encouraged, dear developer(s), then please make it easy and not awkward for your supporters. A certificate for money is not like a blood donation, where it would turn into beer in a refrigerator every so often. I would love to see "Expires in 366 days" please.

I hope I am just getting this wrong. But if it displays in a way that a fresh supporter can misunderstand, then maybe make it simpler and nicer. Thank you for your consideration.
 
Thank you for supporting the project, which I benefit from, in the form that David feels motivated to work on it.

David might take your feedback and make changes to how the Patreon supporter certificate is handled, maybe by an automated process that sends a copy via email, shortly before it expires. Or by some other means, like a built-in certificate retrieval process, which should exist for business type certificates.

While only David handles the certificates and payments, I imagine that the expiry date set rather short is to prevent the certificate from being revoked, if someone cancels their Patreon support. This is just speculation on my side. I don't know how Patreon handles refunds.

Also thank you for your feedback.
 
Today this subject has bugged me again:

I want to start my week and when I launch Sandboxie to look at some stuff, I get a massive colorful popup blocking my entire screen. It gives 10 links, is hard to read and blasts in red letters: "expire in 27 days". And: "get an updated certificate...".

So I went on Patreon and looked it up because in my mind it did not feel like 11 months ago (you can also read my first post, above): I only got my certificate in January 2025 and it is valid, supposedly for one year. Also my Patreon membership looks like some automatic subscription. I do not understand what is going on.

I clicked on the link for "get an updated certificate", but that takes me to a wrong website, where users can purchase directly from Sandboxie those colorful Pack options. I have opted for Patreon and I experience nothing but complications and feel treated as second-class user.


I do not mind maintenance, or security, or whatever. I even tried updating my certificate (I had no link but went to Patreon manually and had to search around, because I normally never need to go there) and did some clicking. I tried clicking on "get supporter certificate" but I got the SAME data again, just with a new date on it, but same content for updatekey and signature. Still with that I tried to apply it, and went to this help page: https://sandboxie-plus.com/applying-supporter-certificate/

And I must report this: Even trying to be a "good user" and event trying to submit an "updated" certificate it does not work. There is not even a field or box to paste my data!



So what does Sandboxie want from me??? Why the huge popup? Why the hassle about (wrong?) expiration notifications?

I suggest a change of system, where Sandboxie will recognize which certificates originate from Patreon, and will assume (mostly correctly) that the user is on an automatic subscription. And then stop all the "notifications" or popups and nagging. If the certificate cannot be updated automatically between Patreon and Sandboxie (for technical reasons) then only notify paying users, once there is really a fresh certificate available on Patreon and only once Sandboxie can actually take and digest it. Not weeks in advance. And build in a grace period of 30 days for paying users, so that in case of sickness or travel their Sandboxie will not look up and cause extra-work for nothing.


Feedback: My use case is personal and non-profit, not business, so I was happy for a good while with the "free option". I went for the Patreon support, as a gesture of appreciation and good will. I was expecting that the occasional friendly nagging would stop. Now I have to tell you that this is MORE hassle and more work than before. I had posted my initial question here on January 28, 2025. I had received a friendly reply from @bastik-1001 (thank you) but no actual answer or solution. A person called David was mentioned, but I have not heard from him at all, not here, not off-group.

If my experience as a Patreon supporter is worse than as a free-option-user, I will stop my payments at Patreon next January, and will just click away those few naggings. I need Sandboxie just for one free accounting tool (GnuCash) and that is not worth much being treated like a none-paying or late customer.

I would like to hear an actual answer and detailed instructions how to operate my use-case with my Patreon-subscription and how to avoid false warnings from now on.
 
Hello, thank you again for your feedback. Thank you for being verbose, about what the issue is and for the suggestion on how to improve things. I am sorry to hear that the renewal process of the certificate is so troublesome.

Please get in touch by email, for David to sort out the issue. He handles the certificates and it is his Patreon, so it seems that only David himself can provide what you are looking for.

For anyone reading along, if you are a Patreon subscriber and it works for you, please let boxinator know, or even if you encounter the same issue.
 
I just submitted my questions on Patreon, having figured whom you mean by David.

If I learn anything useful for other users who pay via Patreon, I will share it here on the forum.
 
Mystery solved:

David (on Patreon) has helped me solve several small mysteries, which together had gotten me worried. Here is what I learnt, and others are welcome to correct or improve my summary:

It seems, the tool "Sandboxie Plus" is not linked to Patreon in any technical way. It does not know (and cannot tell from the certificates) what my payment-history is on Patreon.

So Sandboxie is only looking at the certificates which I paste, as generated on the Patreon website.

This was news to me: A new supporter via Patreon will only get certificates, which are valid for three months, even when making a payment, for a qualifying support-level and opting for payment for an entire year in advance.

Example: I started to be a paying supporter in the end of January, but Sandboxie could only see a "limited" three-month certificate and told me that my supporter-status would run out in the end of April. From my perspective this was wrong, since I had not seen the stepped-certificates-policy until today.

The solution is this: While I am an active and paying member of Patreon, I can request and receive fresh certificates on Patreon, when I want (for example when Sandboxie starts nagging about an upcoming expiry of certificate). According to David: Any member on Patreon who has been there for more than 3 months will get certificates which are valid for an entire year.

I just tested this and it is true and it works: Sandboxie is running in its own world: I had paid in January, and with today's certificate, it is showing me that my present certificate is valid until April next year. That is good, no more nagging. And when it starts again next year, and if I will still be a paying member (which is likely) then I know how to get it satisfied again with another fresh certificate.



There is one more problem I had, which had fooled me: The moment I try to copy-and-paste my fresh certificate into the "Sandboxie Support window" in Sandboxie under "Global Settings" my Windows is popping up an unexpected error-message, which reads as if I would be trying to paste a file somewhere in my folder-structure on my computer. I did not take a screenshot since I did not realize this was triggered from Sandboxie. It reads something like "You are trying to paste xyz-file where there is one already. Do you want to crush the exisiting one?" So this was not relly about a file, or maybe Sandboxie is storing some file backstage, when I paste my little code into the settings-window. I shrugged and just clicked something affirmative today, having seen this before, a few days ago.

So once I had pasted my certificate-data, and clicked away that error-warning and clicked "Apply" then the red-color nagging about "only 23 days left" has finally gone away. Now the "Sandboxie Support" window is saying "Expires in 364 days" in the bottom-left-corner. Which is much better than the bold red letters saying "only nn days". Seems a year in a Sandbox is only 364 days long, which is probably somehow quantum-related, but fine with me.

Hope this helps.
 
The issue is that without the users patreon password I can not securely verify if someone is a user, the way this works on the website is that the user is redirected to patreon for login and patreon reports back if the login was successfull.
In sandman.exe this would require to include an embedded web browser, not great like 100MB of extra libs

I will add a mechanism to the next build that will guide the users to the website where they can get a new cert and may be an info when applying a 3 month cert that its only preliminary.
 
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