Windows Phone device unique ID access with “ANID” is about to be deprecated

If you're developing Windows Phone applications, you've likely used the so-called ANID property to uniquely identify your user (but not his/her phone) by saying something like this:

object userid = UserExtendedProperties.GetValue("ANID");

On Windows Phone 7.x, this contains a hashed value of the user's Microsoft account.

Now, the latest news indicates that the "ANID" value is to be deprecated in future Windows Phone versions, and you should start using "ANID2" in new applications. In fact, you can already use ANID2 if you use the Windows Phone 8 OS.

So make sure your code base is up-to-date with the latest changes, should you be migrating to Windows Phone 8 or later.