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How are we supposed to uniquely identify devices now that the UDID has been deprecated? I need to be able to uniquely identify a device even if the user uninstalls my app and then reinstall it. The new identifierForVendor doesn't work for this purpose because it will randomly generate again once the user uninstalls the app. I also can't use the MAC address to identify the device because it doesn't work in iOS 7.

The advertisingIdentifier seems to work for my purposes but I heard that if you're not actually using it for advertising Apple will reject your app?

Does anyone know of a way to reliably identify a device?

user2479858
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  • Duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6993325/uidevice-uniqueidentifier-deprecated-what-to-do-now – Ramaraj T Jun 17 '13 at 06:33
  • Have a good look at your requirements. Do you _really_ need to uniquely identify a device? What if the person sells their phone to somebody else, and they start using your app. Whatever information you were tracking in the phone for a particular user is now contaminated with information from another user. Do you really want that sort of personal information inadvertently shared? Deprecating UDID is not some arbitrary rule - it's there for a reason. – Abizern Jun 17 '13 at 08:51

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According to Apple, you should be using the vendor or advertising identifiers. Vendor doesn't work for you obviously, but you are fine to use advertisingIdentifier.

alexphilipp
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The advertisingIdentifier seems to work for my purposes but I heard that if you're not actually using it for advertising Apple will reject your app?

They are not currently rejecting apps for using avertisingIdentifier in place of uniqueIdentifier as a device ID. I just had a version of my app approved that uses advertisingIdentifier for purposes other than advertising. A bigger negative is that users can change this identifier any time they like, which is guaranteed to mess up your reporting.

MusiGenesis
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