Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm being really thick, but why is this information that the OS would make available to apps?

It's likely allowed in some miscellaneous permissions file from a bygone era. The lines are probably over a decade old now.

Maybe it’s derived

It's probably the app checking the last modified timestamp on some filesystem location that's only touched during setup.

Edit: It's not a last modified timestamp, it's a volume creation timestamp: https://github.com/mysk-research/loupe/blob/2262efd4456ecba8...

Again, why is this something that an app would need access? The next test under the creation timestamp value is a test for getting the UUID of the volume. Again, why is an app allowed to access the unique identifier? Apple knows this type of thing is precisely what deanonymizing people would drool over, so why is this accessible. What part of iOS would even need to know this for a legitimate purpose? Are these calls using private methods that Apple does not intend for use being abused for purpose? I'm not an iOS dev, so I have no familiarity with this.

To stop people from using apps they haven't paid for. As an honest person, if you want to use an app, you'd pay for it. Unfortunately, not everyone out there is honest, and there are various ways to get around having to pay for an app that costs money. Fingerprinting the device lets sellers of software find people who didn't pay for the software but are somehow using it.

I really hope you're being facetious. It' be pretty clever if you were, but for those that think this is serious...

If you want someone to pay for an app, don't make it free with in-app purchases. This is not something allowing for the OS to provide a unique identifier that can be abused available to app developers. App developers cannot be trusted. At. All. Ever.

These aren't free apps. It's not theoretical that people are not paying for programs on iOS.

https://thepiratebay.org/search.php?cat=305&q=ipa

Reply on news.ycombinator.com