If Apple's attitude to UDIDs is unclear, the efforts of what's now scores of businesses to deliver an alternative are far more certain.

One such firm is ad platform AppRedeem, which has developed a system it believes can fill the void.

The advantage of its Organisational Specific Device Identifier – or ODID for short – is that, while it enables developers to track users, they can't associate that data with a handset's specific MAC address.

Ode to an ODID

According to AppRedeem co-founder Sheffield Nolan, MAC addresses are just used as a seed to generate the ODID.

Each ODID is sandboxed within the firm that created it, meaning the MAC address used to create it is kept separate.

ODIDs also stay constant even if a device is reset – a feature it's suggested developers have been calling out for.

AppRedeem added ODID support to its SDK on 29 March, with the SDK delivered in plain source code so the inner workings of the system could be viewed by all. The company is also set to share specs so users can employ it on their own, without having to tap into the full SDK.

[source: TechCrunch]