Apple is beginning to reject app submissions which access a device’s UDID, according to a report by Mashable.
You just can’t beat a good privacy scare, and the one surrounding the use of UDIDs, or Unique Device Identifiers is the current biggie. Used by developers and advertising companies, UDIDs allow tracking of individual devices which has the privacy conscious up in arms.
With Apple now reportedly rejecting apps that use UDIDs, developers, ad. agencies and anyone else who may legitimately use UDIDs will need to re-write their apps to remove the feature…
Mashable’s report suggests that two of Apple’s ten review teams are already rejecting apps that use a device’s UDID, and that the other teams will come online over time, leading to all Apple’s testers eventually rejecting such apps.
Apple is said to be accelerating the removal of UDID-using apps from its App Store due to increasing pressure from all angles, though developers will understandably not be quite so keen on the move. No obvious replacement for the UDID has been touted just yet, with developers very much left to their own devices in order to keep their apps functioning as they do now. Apple, for its part, has been characteristically dev-unfriendly about the whole situation.
Are you an iOS app developer whose app relies on UDIDs to function? What will you be doing to replace them? Let us know in the comments.