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I know this the question of how to detect if your iOS app has been pirated has come up dozens of times, and the general consensus is that:

  1. It isn't worth playing that cat and mouse game
  2. People who pirate your app most likely wouldn't have bought it anyways
  3. People using your app, paid or not, is almost a form of advertising so can help in a way

But, what about pirates that become (to borrow a term from Google) vampires - people who pirate your app and actually cost you money since your app is very server-side dependent? Is there a recommended way to detect if someone is using your app without having paid for it? Does Apple offer any receipt verification for the paid app itself (not an in-app purchase)?

OpenUserX03
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  • I sympathize with your predicament, but is there any difference from Apple's POV between hosted and non-hosted apps? How would the answer be any different in the case of hosted apps? – Michael Petrotta Aug 19 '12 at 06:15
  • You can detect jailbrokenness through the [kernel](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10443029/what-changes-in-a-jailbroken-kernel) (my apologies for the last comment, I didn't quite read the question). Which would be step one in some kind of validation process. – CodaFi Aug 19 '12 at 06:17

1 Answers1

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There are a lot of complicated ways to do it. However, they take a long time to implement, and aren't very effective. They'll stop people who just run Crackulous and don't really know anything about the actual process of cracking apps, but skilled crackers can bypass them easily. The best solution is to just not implement any kind of copy protection and to spend your time making your app better instead to boost legit sales, since there's currently not any reliable way to stop piracy.

Also, some people are going to recommend blocking jailbroken devices, but that's easily defeated and will deter people who jailbreak for legitimate reasons (and there are a lot of them) from using your app.

Chris
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