Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for associating an application that was pre-installed on a computer with a user account on an online store. A system configured to practice the method presents an application available for download, receives a request to download the application to a computing device, determines that the application is a pre-installed application, presents an authorization prompt configured to request user authorization to link the application with a user account, receives the user authorization, generates a unique hardware identifier associated with the computing device, determines that the application is linkable based upon the unique hardware identifier, and links the adoptable application with the user account when the adoptable application is linkable.