Stopping Screen Shots from being taken

[ntdesign]

Is there anyway to stop people from taking a screen shot/print screen of my program in vb?

[andrewb]

Pry their Alt and Print Screen keys off? Actually that wouldn't stop people with screen grabbing programs.

[ZeBula8]

Make it ugly as hell

[anotherVBnewbie]

Don't let folks install your program

[ntdesign]

I was thinking more on the side of coding I have seen programs that stop you from taking screenshots the normal way by pressing prnt screen, that's what I'm looking for.

[Harsh Gupta]

you can search Allapi.net to check if some API is related to such things...........coz the worst part is that PrntScrn doesnot have any KeyCode so that u can disable this key!!

[penagate]

You could try installing a global hook to listen for the PrintScreen key press and consume the message so that it is not passed to Windows. I'm not sure whether Windows processes it first however. If it does you'd need a low-level keyboard hook which I'm also not sure if you can do in VB (will have to look that one up).

However, you can't stop screenshots being taken altogether. It is a very simple bit of code to make a small app that takes screenshots of the screen or a particular window, when you press F10, or click a button.

[Hack]

Actually that wouldn't stop people with screen grabbing programs.

In addition to what penagate said, there are a ton of screen grabbing programs out there. Some free, some shareware, but very easy to get your hands on.

[JensPeder]

I rememeber reading about some guys trying to disable screenshopcapture-programs. They had alot of ideas, though they probably didn't make it. One guy suggested hooking the api-function used in VB for screenshots, or change the dll a bit. They also talked about disorting the screen somehow, so that screenshots got messed up. Some of the ideas didn't sound toooo farfetched, though I dubt you could do it in VB

[penagate]

Well to take a screenshot you use BitBlt. If you mess up BitBlt you also mess up a lot of things non-screenshot-related.

[Frans C]

I remember I came along something similar on the web several years ago. It was a component that was able to show images on a website, without the possibility to copy the image. It blocked screenshots as well.
I noticed that when this component was running, bitblt didn't function anymore, so I removed it immediately from my machine.
I never saw the component again, and I forgot the name.

[Hack]

I never saw the component again, and I forgot the name.

I would consider both to be good things.

[shirazamod]

Try using GetAsyncKeystate (I dunno how its spelt)