

Every iPhone contains a unique, software-visible serial number - the UDID - nephics
http://www.pskl.us/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/iPhone-Applications-Privacy-Issues.pdf

======
orta
All networking components have a unique ID also (MAC Addresses), so this feels
a bit like scaremongering to me. Developers on any platform can use that
relatively safely to presuming individuality, so why's it bothersome that the
iPhone has one unqiue ID? (instead of the two MAC addresses (wifi / cellular )

~~~
prodigal_erik
A user can replace the default MAC address which the platform read from the
hardware. Is that true for an iPhone UDID?

------
basicxman
So...if I had somebody else's UDID, what could I do their phone?
Scaremongering indeed. _yawns_

P.S. Being an owner of an app review blog, I give my UDID out frequently.

~~~
rmoriz
If you can match the UUID to a real name and make the user use your
app/website frequently, you've pretty much everything to track her/him (add
geo if you wish).

He/She cannot escape/opt out.

------
rmoriz
As far as I know each Mac has its own unique serial number (despite from the
CPU serial). I wonder how frequent this ID is used in the wild...

~~~
rmoriz
ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk '/IOPlatformUUID/ { split($0, line,
"\""); printf("%s\n", line[4]); }'

thanks to [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/933460/unique-hardware-
id...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/933460/unique-hardware-id-in-mac-
os-x)

