Electric equipment, and a method and a program for preventing the
unauthorized use of same, by which it is possible to prevent the theft of
electric equipment installed in an environment where the electric
equipment is available for the use of an unspecified number of users and
the stealing of information stored in the electric equipment. The
electric equipment comprises: an operation limiting section for setting a
function limit to make at least part of functions of the electric
equipment unavailable; an I/F for connecting an external device to the
electric equipment; an external device information obtaining section for
obtaining device identification information from an external device
connected via the interface to the electric equipment to identify the
device; a write control section for associating the function limit with
the device identification information of a prescribed external device to
thereby obtain a cryptographic key; an NVRAM for storing the
cryptographic key; and a comparator for determining whether or not the
device identification information obtained from an external device
connected via the interface to the electric equipment matches the
cryptographic key stored in the NVRAM. The operation limiting section
cancels the function limit when the comparator determines that the
obtained information matches the cryptographic key.