Apple recently said in a press release early this month that it has taken steps to stop an offender who used other people’s iTunes accounts to buy the apps.
The incident has been considered as the violation of the Developer Program License Agreement, and fraudulent purchase. Thuat Nguyen, the iPhone developer and his apps have been removed from the App Store as a consequence.
Nguyen has shown an incredible increase in sales over the weekend of July 4. The iPhone application developer accounted for 42 out of the top 50 books in terms of revenue. At the same time, there were reports from the users that their accounts were being hacked into and used for purchasing apps on the App Store.
However, Apple has claimed that the iTunes servers were not at all compromised. “An extremely small percentage of users, about 400 of the 150 million iTunes users; that is less than 0.0003 percent of iTunes users were impacted,” an Apple representative was quoted saying.
Apple has reassured its customers that neither Nguyen nor any other developer “can not receive any iTunes confidential customer data when an app is downloaded.”
AppleInsider commented after the incident that it has been noticed ‘legitimate iTunes accounts are under organized attacks from people in China’. Information is reportedly being sold to the users for a few dollars and might have been used until the credit card was turned off.
In a damage control move, Apple said it has already implemented a new level of security measure on the iTunes Store to help curb any such activity in near future. Now the users are being asked to enter the code on the back of the credit card more often, while purchasing from the iTunes Store.
Apple has also requested the users to contact their respective financial institution, if they notice any fishy or unauthorized iTunes charge in the credit card billing. The company has also recommended changing the iTunes password immediately.
Tags: Apple Fraud, iPad appstore, iphone developer, news