Skip to main content

Developer Access To The UDID Deprecated in iOS 5

A major change has been noticed in Apple's latest operating system iOS 5 with the way that developers access an iDevice's unique identifier number.


For those who are not developers or unfamiliar with the concept, the 'UDID' allows developers to identify app users on a specific device by device basis. Many apps and mobile ad networks use the UDID or hashed version to keep track of who their users are and what actions they have taken.



As Techcrunch points, App publishers and developers are now supposed to create their own unique identifiers to keep track of users going forward, which means they may have to throw all of their historical user date out of the window and start from scracth again.


Apple describes the change in its developer documentation:




Deprecated in iOS 5.0


uniqueIdentifier


An alphanumeric string unique to each device based on various hardware details. (read-only) (Deprecated in iOS 5.0. Instead, create a unique identifier specific to your app.)


This major change indicates Apple's approach towards security and privacy concerns.


Developers and other readers: What do you think of this change in iOS 5? Security consciousness? Or just a small change?

Comments

  1. Please, be still. There is a solution: http://stackoverflow.com/q/6993325/492624

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for providing the link. Any developer out there should verify the authenticity!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think it is really bad the drop. I can understand the privacy stuff. But we used the UDID to enable security access to highly sensitive Enterprise Data. (Only one security layer of many) Every user who wanted to access this data over phone was asked before he give it out. The advantage was. If we needed to block a user from access, (stolen phone, ...) we just needed to delete the UDID and not the entire user account.

    For us .. We really need to think about a new concept. That sux so much

    Are there any suggestions out there?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HP’s webOS To Be Open Source

Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced that its not so hit platform webOS to be available to the open source community. In a press release that is posted today, the company announced that webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable.     Few days ago, HP started selling its Touchpads for $99 which was a huge flop product in the tablet world. This drastic price decrease is to cut down its manufacturing losses. Now, the company is also putting down its webOS to the open source community and cuts its losses. The company also confirmed that it would not build any new webOS hardware for the time being, though it would actively develop and support the operating system. Do you think tablets will survive in this Apple ruling iPad world? Full press release from the site below: HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source HP to enable creativity of the community to accelerate the next-generation web-centric platform PA...

How To Install Windows 8 on a Virtual Machine

Now that Microsoft released Windows 8 Developer Preview build officially this Tuesday, want to see and test all new features right from your machine without disturbing existing operating system? Read on.. Interesting part about Windows 8 is that Microsoft is foreseeing an OS that scales right from small form factors, tablets and all the way to big servers. Major updates in this new operating system include Tablet Optimization, Picture Password, New Start Screen with ‘Tile’ (apps), Metro UI, Charms, IE 10.     In order to test out Windows 8 Dev Preview in a virtual machine, I tried installing it in Microsoft’s Windows Virtual PC and as well as VMWare. Unfortunately, installation failed in both virtualization technologies with random blue screen errors. And here is the screenshot of all new re-imagined version of blue screen in Widows 8.   Even I tried installing on Oracle’s Virtual Box with default settings. It failed in that too. Finally, after tweaking so...