Apple Begins A Crack Down Against Websites Selling Access To iOS Betas

Apple offers iOS beta releases exclusively to its registered iOS developers who pay a registration fee of $99 per year. Each developer account receives 100 iOS test device slots which allows developers to install the iOS betas prior to their official launch on these devices. However, numerous individuals have started selling their allocated slots in the market to regular people to have their UDID (unique device identifier) activated for installation of iOS betas. As noted by MacStories, Apple is now taking action against these UDID selling websites taking them down from the internet.

Quoting from the source:

After noticing several of the sites mentioned in Baio’s article (from Wired) had become unavailable in recent weeks (activatemyios.com, iosudidregistrations.com, activatemyudid.com, udidregistration.com, instantudidactivation.com), we reached out to some of them asking whether Apple was behind the takedown of their “services”, which infringed on Apple’s developer agreement. While most of our emails bounced, we heard back from one of the site owners (who asked to remain anonymous), who confirmed his hosting provider took down the site after a complaint for copyright infringement by Apple.

it appears Apple has started taking action against these sites recently, and more precisely after Wired ran the story on UDID activation. Last year, Apple reportedly closed developer accounts of people who sold their available UDID slots to other users; this year, it appears Apple has chosen the more direct path of shutting down websites and their services by filing DMCA requests to their hosting providers.

Apple seems to have taken action against the popular iMZDL.com as well, a popular site which provided access to iOS beta downloads. The site has now put a notice on their website saying “we will no longer be putting up downloads on iMZDL.com for Apple Betas”.

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