CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosiphone
sag
sag

Reputation: 186

How To Protect Developed Applications for iPhone, etc. from Reselling

I have developed an Application for iPhone. In some countries, there are some places you can go, give your iDevice and they will install any App/Apps on it much, much cheaper(for 1$ for any App). How do they do that? - They simply legally buy an Application once and then synchronize "customer's" iDevice with there Account. I think it's illegal, to resell...

So my questions are: Which steps as a developer can I make to protect my Application to be illegally shared? Does Apple do anything against that? Because apple purchases are account related.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, that application is for free, the products must be bought within the Application (In-App Purchase) which will be downloaded after purchase form other server.

One solution could be, if it was possible to get UDID of device and "account-id" I could limit download, let's say, for 5 devices.. I read that, starting with iOS5 it isn't possible to get UDID, or is it? And is such limitation against Apple Rules?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 120

Answers (2)

lxt
lxt

Reputation: 31304

I could limit download, let's say, for 5 devices [...] is such limitation against Apple Rules?

Refer to Fernando's answer for your UDID question, but this is absolutely against the developer agreement. Your in-app-purchase needs to be restorable on any devices that user owns. It is somewhat unlikely, of course, that a user owns more than five iDevices, so if you want to take your chances you can. That said, I know of instances where Apple have come down on people who tried to limit apps 'per device'.

if it was possible to get UDID of device and "account-id" I could limit download, let's say, for 5 devices

If by 'account-id' you mean the iTunes username that downloaded/bought your app, then no, it's not possible. You don't have access to any information about the purchaser, I'm afraid.

Upvotes: 3

Fernando Mazzon
Fernando Mazzon

Reputation: 3591

The companies I worked for so far refrained from doing such restrictive DRM because it's more possible that you will harm a customer by mistake than you get anything. Don't waste your time implementing this. You don't simply get people to buy your stuff by annoying them. People that get your app this way in general can't be convinced to buy

But if you must do it, here's a workaround to have a unique device identifier after iOS5:

https://github.com/gekitz/UIDevice-with-UniqueIdentifier-for-iOS-5

Upvotes: 2

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