iPhone App Adds Its Own Anti-Piracy Measures
Like many iPhone developers, Ben Chatelain is frustrated to see cracked versions of his project, Full Screen Web Browser, showing up online. Following the usability suggestions of John Gruber, Ben has chosen to do something about it. The latest version of his app has detection capabilities for pirated instances, and reports the UUID of the device back to his server. After 10 days of running a cracked version, users are presented with a “trial over” dialog box and given the option to buy up to the legitimate version.
That ‘s an excerpt from TUAW ‘s recent post on Ben Chatelain ‘s efforts to discourage “ and convert “ users with ‘cracked ‘ copies of his iPhone app. This seems a pretty good approach to me.
TUAW points out that some users may object to any app ‘phoning home ‘ with any sort of ‘personally identifiable ‘ data “ but Ben says his implementation of this antipiracy measure *only* pings back from cracked versions.
It will be interesting to see how effective this method proves in converting users. Hopefully it will work well and perhaps catch on with more developers
When I read the title of your post I thought it was an update of the OS, not an effort from an individual application.
Personally, I think it’s a waste of time. It’s probably very easy to crack this new protection.
fiuza – sadly, I think you’re probably right. Faking system date immediately springs to mind …
The only protection that I ever see working is that kind of app that you must be online and have to log in, like WoW, day of defeat, etc. It might be an option, but would make the app less attractive.
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