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This seems to me to be something that should have been issued as an OS-level patch. Apple could prevent a lot of these issues by using an application-specific

This seems to me to be something that should have been issued as an OS-level patch. Apple could prevent a lot of these issues by using an application-specific UDID generated by the device. Hash the UDID with a random salt generated from entropy on the device, and use it only for that app install. Developers then couldn't track you from install to install, or across their application ecosystems. Privacy issue averted. Any existing calls that hundreds of thousands of applications make to currently get the UDID just return this application-specific one instead.

Jyaif 15y ago
They can't patch the OS because some applications rely on the UDID being constant. For example, some games check if the scores/progress are real by storing a hash of the scores and the UDID. This allows the dev to check that the scores/progress file wasn't downloaded from internet. Changing the UDID would make the application think that the scores were tampered with.
- gmac 15y ago
  But they could change the kind of UDID returned to apps installed after the OS update. That seems like a reasonable compromise?