Since reversing an application is a rather menial task now, whats to prevent a user from taking your application - stripping the protection and re-releasing it? Not to mention that IMEI spoofing to an application can be done with a little bit of research.
More importantly, with your approach - what happens when someone strips out the protection, throws it into a nice little program - then bombs all the IMEI numbers they want? Then you'll have "pirates" being blocked who well, never pirated your application. Seems like an easy way to quickly make your blacklist pretty inaccurate. -Tim Strazzere On Nov 16, 2:02 pm, Rachel Blackman <[email protected]> wrote: > On Nov 16, 2009, at 10:34 AM, nEx.Software wrote: > > > Not to mention that just because someone might have pirated some app > > at some time, doesn't mean that they pirated your app. > > That's why it needs to be able to check against Google Checkout or > > whatever payment processor is used... > > Also not to mention how many people buy out-of-contract phones off of eBay to > toy with new techy stuff. What if someone gets their phone's IMEI > blacklisted in your database, goes and sells their phone, and someone > innocent now picks up the phone and finds abruptly they can't use any of the > apps linked into this antipiracy thing? (And lest you say that wouldn't > happen, look at how many of the Xbox 360 consoles that have gotten locked out > of Xbox Live abruptly ended up on eBay, while the folks who got locked out go > get new consoles. After all, Xbox Live uses similar security methods, where > the lockout applies to the hardware ID, not merely the account.) > > This isn't to say that antipiracy methods aren't desirable or useful. Just > that if they bite /innocent/ users as well, you'll have a headache to deal > with. Look at how many 'I can't see this app in the market!' threads we > already have, and how much frustration there is just from developers over > that. Imagine the users adding to that with 'I paid for this app off the > store, but when I try to run it claims I pirated it!' > > In general, as a software developer, I tend to think that antipiracy methods > that allow some pirates through are better than antipiracy methods that might > flag innocent users as wrongdoers. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
