As a developer, you’re only as good as the apps you create. Your code is your livelihood. As such, it’s important to protect your intellectual property and ensure that no one steals your work. The threat of an app being stolen might seem like a distant possibility for most developers, but if you don’t take action now it could become an all-too-real problem in the future. In this article we’ll explore some ways app developers can safeguard their work from theft as well as prevent issues with third-party companies who may not have their best interests at heart.
Contents
Own your work
First and foremost, you own your work. You are the creator of this app and no one else has any claim to it. It’s important that you keep this in mind when making decisions about how to distribute or protect your application code.
Avoid sharing your code with others unless absolutely necessary: There are many reasons why you should avoid letting other people access (or even see) your app’s source code; however, here are some of the most common:
- They might steal it! App development is a competitive industry where everyone wants an edge over their competitors–and if someone sees something they like in yours, they might try to rip it off and pass it off as their own work.
- They might make changes without telling you: If someone else has access to your source code, there’s nothing stopping them from changing things around behind-the-scenes without telling anyone else what they’ve done–and those changes could break existing functionality within the app itself!
Build a digital signature
A digital signature is a way to prove the authenticity of a digital document. It uses public-key cryptography, which requires two keys: one public and one private. The public key is used to encrypt data, while only your private key can decrypt it. Digital signatures use these two keys to verify that no one has tampered with your app’s code after it was published on the store – even if someone were able to steal it!
Digital signatures are not just useful for protecting against theft; they can also be used in other ways as well. For example, digital signatures can be used for authentication purposes (like when logging into an account) or non-repudiation (when proving that someone did indeed make certain changes).
Invest in security
It is important to invest in security. You should be using encryption, password protection and backup and restore for all of your applications. The best way to protect your application is by using secure storage.
Protect intellectual property
Protecting your app from theft is important, but it can be hard. There are many ways to protect your code, but you need to know what you’re protecting and who you’re protecting it from.
If you want to protect intellectual property (IP), then the first thing that needs doing is identifying what IP means in this context. For example:
- Is it copyright? This would be something like a piece of music or writing; anything where someone has put time into creating something original that can’t easily be copied by another person without permission from its creator(s). Copyright law protects such things for 70 years after death or publication if there was no death date specified at time of creation–but even then there may still be laws in place protecting those works beyond these limits!
- Is it patentable? Patents cover inventions rather than creative works so they don’t apply here either because patents expire after 20 years anyway unless renewed during their lifetime span.”
Know about outside companies
- Know about outside companies that offer app security services
- Know about outside companies that offer app development services
- Know about outside companies that offer app marketing services
Engage with the app community
Engage with the app community
Regularly engage with users, get feedback on your app and find out what your users like and dislike about it. This can be done in a number of ways:
- Use social media to ask for feedback from current or potential customers. You can also use this as an opportunity to post updates on new features and updates that are coming up soon.
- Create surveys using services like SurveyMonkey or Typeform. These will allow you to collect more detailed data than just comments posted on social media sites which may not provide enough information without further probing questions being asked of respondents (e.g., “How often do you use our app?”).
- Run focus groups where participants are invited based on their demographics such as age range or gender etc., so that there’s a greater chance of getting responses from people who match those criteria rather than having everyone attend regardless whether they fit into these categories or not (which could lead some valuable insights being missed).
Secure your mobile apps
- Use encryption to protect your data.
- Use a digital signature for authentication and authorization.
- Use a secure development environment, such as one that uses sandboxing or virtualization technology, to isolate the app from other processes running on the device.
- Make sure your app store is secure–governments have been known to hack into these platforms and inject malware into apps (e.g., China’s iPhone spyware).
- Developing a mobile app is an investment, not just an expense!
All developers need to keep their code and app development safe from theft.
Developers have to protect their code and apps from theft. It’s a fact of life, but it doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to make it harder for the bad guys.
The first step is making sure that your intellectual property (IP) is protected by copyright laws. You might be surprised at how easy it is for someone else to copy your work if they know what they’re doing and don’t care about getting caught by legal authorities. If you haven’t yet registered your software with the US Copyright Office, do so as soon as possible!
Once that’s done, make sure all of your project files are encrypted before sending them off into cyberspace or storing them digitally anywhere else where anyone could get access–including cloud storage services such as Dropbox or Google Drive which could potentially be hacked into by malicious third parties looking for valuable information such as this kind of thing
Conclusion
We hope that this article has helped you understand how to protect your app from code theft. As with any other industry, the mobile app development market is full of people who are looking for ways to make money off other peoples’ hard work. This can be frustrating and upsetting for avoid app code theft who put so much time into their projects, but there are steps you can take to ensure that your work isn’t stolen by others!