Obsessed for the Privacy of Your iPhone?
Their phones are pricey and don’t have the best specs on the market, yet today they are the most admired manufacturers on earth. In the third consecutive survey, Apple ranked itself as the highest among manufacturers of smart phones in customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Certainly, your iphone knows more about you than any other creature in the world. It holds your contacts, pictures, videos, texts, voicemails, apps, banking details and emails. Also, one can use it for paying bills, playing games with friends, check-in to the favorite places and much more.
However, Apple also comes with several hidden features that you may not have realized existed. It has made convenient to make one familiar with the operations of your iPhone through a Unique Device Identifier or UDID.
An Overview of UDID
Unique Device Identifier is the serial number attached to every iOS device. Generally, it is available for the developers to install early versions of the mobile applications for debugging and testing purpose.
Now, doesn’t that make you wonder why anyone needs to track your UDID number?
Over the last decade, online and mobile marketing has grown exponentially. UDID aligns to the way consumers make purchasing decisions by tracking almost all their activities through iPhone, iPod and iPad. This led Businesses to discover what they like and tailor ads to their preferences.
How? Well, here’s the cycle:
The developer working behind an app sells your UDID to an advertising network, which then can be stored on its servers. Further, these ad networks sell their databases to ad companies, which can create a complete beautiful picture by combining all UDID databases.
Even though, it’s not a bad thing for most people, it has the potential for being misused. In isolation, we are giving our unique identity to the companies all the time, which means allowing them to excavate our personal information, credit cards numbers, medical records, home street address and much more.
Epilogue
Ever you are asked for access to your UDID and you care for your privacy, take a second to consider if you want to share all super freely. If not, you can use a Secure UDID that doesn’t let the hackers unleash the information your UDID holds. Though it allows developers to differentiate between devices, they can use it within their own code. They are primarily prevented from accessing the same UDID as another developer, which greatly reduces the risks of any potential leaks.
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