IOS: UDID is outdated ... MAC address?

Question

As we know, Apple is devaluing developer access to UDIDs. But as far as I know, you can get the MAC address of iDevice. So what's the difference then? Both MAC addresses and UDIDs are unique identifiers for equipment that are not application specific.

Answer 1

Some obvious differences between UDIDs and MAC addresses:

• It can be assumed that a device may have more than one MAC address.

• Uniqueness of guarantee for MAC addresses is not Apple’s responsibility.

• UDID and MAC differ in size and format.

I think it’s better to think about deprecating UDIDs as Apple’s way of encouraging developers to switch to other authentication tools. For example, track the user, not the device, by setting up the userid / password system. UDID tracking causes some problems, for example, what to do if a user loses or sells his device.

Answer 2

Apple really condemned the UDID because of third-party companies that exist to aggregate (as with payment) data from application developers to sell ads.

See cookie tracking, same concept. Thus, while technically justified and huge convenience for developers who do not want to require a username and password for their applications, because of third-party tracker companies, this is disastrous for user privacy.

Apple now supports the UUID (Universal Unique Identifier), which can be extracted from the SDK, which uniquely identifies this user for the application itself, but not for all applications.

This isolates the identifier, does not require the developer to resort to hacks, such as the MAC address, and protects the user from third-party tracking schemes.

If you are not using a UUID, expect Apple to reject your application. Even if you use a Mac address, you do not necessarily avoid detection, as there are almost no reasons why the application will require such information to work.