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I'm creating an Android application for a fantasy league as part of a college project. It's a paid application, and requires each download to be associated with only one team.

I'm confused as to how best go about it. If a user goes to settings and clears the data from there, all files, settings and databases would be deleted rendering a locally stored indicator for "The app has already run before and hence user is registered" as pointless.

Another option that had come to my mind was to store the IMEI no on a remote database (with SHA1 encryption to protect the data) but the problem with this is that, if a user loses or changes his phone, his further participation would be impossible. Additionally, users understandably don't like to share IMEI numbers and it's acceptable.

The best solution in my mind was to restrict usage of the app to the Google account that was used to download the application. With this, even a change of handsets would allow further participation of the user. However, I've not been able to find a way to obtain the Android Market account (only require E-mail) which resulted in the download.

So, my question is, how do I best go about with the problem that I face? Is there a way to get the Android Market username? Or is there a worthy alternative?

Raveesh Bhalla
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The server-side option is what you want, you can get a unique id from each phone and use that as your identifier.

Community
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fredley
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  • True that eliminates the need for IMEI, but it still causes the problem for the case when users change their phone, which is the biggest problem currently that I'm facing – Raveesh Bhalla Mar 20 '11 at 11:54
  • Do you expect that to happen often? If it really is an issue just store everything server-side and have people provide credentials when they start the app to link it to their account. – fredley Mar 20 '11 at 13:56
  • Not often currently, but if I scale the league up to something like for an entire soccer season, then the running time is nearly a year, and then that will come into play quite frequently. What I've considered currently is to allow users to have a E-Mail/Password combo, and an IMEI/Unique Id. The IMEI locks down a handset to just one user, who, on changing a handset, can apply to have the IMEI changed using his Username/Password combo. That's the closest to an answer I've come, but I was hoping that there maybe a cleaner way of going about it (i.e, tying an app to the Android Market account) – Raveesh Bhalla Mar 20 '11 at 15:14
  • You definitely want to handle this server side then. – fredley Mar 20 '11 at 15:16