How to ensure that the app was purchased from app store?

Question

Is there a way to confirm (programmatically) that the application was purchased from AppStore? Or, maybe, there is a way to get a list of devices IDs from AppStore that purchased my app?

The reason is the willing to determine if the application was legally purchased or not...

I know that there is a way to know that the in-app purchase took place. Maybe I can check for a paid app purchase too?

The solution may be inside the iPhone app or some check in server side.

The application that I develop is about to get a content from the web server. Usually (by browsing my client's site) this content is not free and he wants to be sure that users that get the content by using an iPhone app (that I develop) did pay for the app.

Answer 1

I don't know of anyway of "confirming that the application was purchased from the appStore". I don't think there's any bit that's flipped or "thing" you can check to see.

Sorry.

But if you do learn of such a thing, let me know.

Answer 2

No, but see this related question for information on how to potentially detect that your app has been tampered with in order to allow it to run as a bootleg.

The in-app-purchase-style verification has struck me as a good way to do this, but Apple doesn't currently support it. It might be worth a bug report.

Answer 3

Check out these related questions:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/957629/iphone-app-store-verifying-paid-customer

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1929166/how-to-programmatically-determine-if-drm-was-removed-from-iphone-application

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1140856/determining-if-an-iphone-is-jail-broken-programatically

Answer 4

My previous Stack Overflow question may help you out: Reducing piracy of iPhone applications