It has been unveiled that about 50,000 or more fraudulent and fake iTunes accounts have been reported to be sold over China’s most popular TaoBao website. TaoBao is a buying and selling website that is same as eBay.
This is not the first time Apple has faced such situations. The prominent iPhone service of Apple has been targeted by criminal many times. Recently an intruder attack on iTunes security also posed serious questions for the security designers of Apple. The company did not comment on the issue but however warned its users to protect their personal details.
These deceptive accounts on TaoBao are linked to stolen credit cards. The service can be availed by buyers for as low as 1 Yuan at a time with unlimited download facility. The iTunes accounts are not necessarily stolen using debit cards but are also accounts based on fraudulent information and hacking techniques. The category of crime is not obvious yet. However the platform for it is China’s TaoBao.
This fraud has damages the integrity of many big companies such as Apple and PayPal. A recent attack in last summer caused serious problems for Apple and PayPal. They were targeted by an e-mail scam that resulted in loss of thousands of pounds (–foul word(s) removed–)ociated with the credit card users. Apple however tried to increase the security at that time.
A man from Wolverhampton recently admitted that he was involved in a fraud £500,000 where he used stolen credit cards to buy songs from the online service.
From the perspective of TaoBao, things tend to be quite normal and there is no such hype in regard to these stolen or fake iTunes accounts. The website’s spokesperson says that the company cannot take actions until a valid takedown request is received.
TaoBao is China’s biggest online buying and selling success story. The company has over 200 million users. It is believed that the company has sold good of approximately 400 billion Yuan cost. The company also says that they had not yet received direct complaints on sales, so they cannot remove listings.
This news of fake iTunes accounts preceded the news regarding the Apple’s new MAC App store. This new service aims to transfer the success (–foul word(s) removed–)ociated with iPhone to laptops and desktops. The programs in this case are required to p(–foul word(s) removed–) through Apple’s approval prior to the sale.
Security is indeed a challenge in such a global world where the knowledge and resource are so easily available. But one thing is for sure that if there are 100 ways to steal, then there are 101 ways of getting caught. Thus the intruders though intend to damage the integrity of big companies, yet companies try to fight and rebuttal the criminals.
