Best UDID alternative (so far)
You guys might have already got the news that Apple is now rejecting apps that access UDID. No comment about the decision, but as a developer I had to figure out solution as close to as orignal UDID. CFUUID could be an alternative but it has few issues. Mainly the UUID won’t be unique for device but unique in ‘space and time’. This means you have to create it and store it (locally + server) to identify the particular instance of the app. But if user take a backup of this device, and restore on new device, he would have two devices with same UUID and you don’t want that. (for example if you want your app to work on a single device at a time)
There are other temporary solutions (like MAC address), but no risk free solution yet. So I have come up with an idea, if somehow I can prevent the user from backing up the stored UUID, my app would be able to treat every restore as a new device (only one app against each UUID). Fortunately there is a way. All you have to do is to store your UUID in keychain and set attribute to
kSecAttrAccessibleAlwaysThisDeviceOnly
or similar so it won’t migrate to new device on backup/restore. I am sorry I don’t have any code to show you guys but I’ll soon add it here.
This method solves many issues, EXCEPT the fact that you won’t be able to track the actual device, but you can identify each instance of your app (good for privacy, good for developers, bad for ad networks?).
Another plus is that keychain service also allows you to share your keys across different apps (via kSecAttrAccessGroup)
I am sure there might still be some issues with this approach, so I need your help to identify and address these issues. Please leave a comment here if you have any suggestion/issue
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