“Amid extra scrutiny from Congress around privacy issues, Apple this week has started rejecting apps that access UDIDs, or identification numbers that are unique to every iPhone and iPad,” Kim-Mai Cutler reports for TechCrunch.
“Apple had already given developers a heads-up about the change more than six months ago when it said in some iOS documentation that it was going to deprecate UDIDs,” Cutler reports. “But it looks like Apple is moving ahead of schedule with pressure from lawmakers and the media.”
Cutler reports, “It can take more than a year to deprecate features because developers need time to adjust and change their apps. A few weeks ago, some of the bigger mobile-social developers told me that Apple had reached out and warned them to move away from UDIDs. But this is the first time Apple has issued outright rejections for using UDIDs.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
U.S. Congress grills 34 iOS developers on compliance with Apple’s app privacy policies in official letter – March 22, 2012
U.S. Senate Democrat Schumer asks FTC to probe Apple, Google – March 5, 2012
Apple: App access to contact data will require explicit user approval – February 15, 2012
Tim Cook is once again showing he will be quite pro-active when it comes to doing the right thing.
Oh! No UDID int?
That’s right.
Apple defecated them.
What?! No “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide” remark(s). I’m astonished! Must be a slow weekend.
A rather naive response, if that the case why hide your social security numbers or the pin to your bank account.
Bobchr. I think you missed the point. It wasn’t a response. It was a comment. A facetious one at that, directed toward the people who are always commenting that citizens have nothing to fear if they aren’t doing anything wrong. Naive response? Hardly.
Most of ’em don’t work weekends.
Hmm. Aren’t there legitimate reasons for accessing the ID #s? For example to identify which device you might be logging into an account with (spouse1/spouse2/iPhone/iPad/etc).
Why was it ever allowed in the first place?