Apple semi acknowledges iTunes fraud

Apple is well known for its “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude when it comes to its own products, but the Cupertino company came as close as it probably ever will to admitting a problem when it kicked a hacker out of its App Store this weekend.
On Sunday, popular tech blog Engadget reported that its readers were writing in about something fishy occuring in Apple’s iTunes, namely that 42 of the top 50 books in the App Store’s “book” category hailed from the same seller, one Thuat Nguyen, and contained apparently fake content – in Vietnamese none the less.

The seller, who appears to have released most of his spurious book apps in April, had set his company website name as “mycompany” with a link leading to www.home.com.
The plot thickens, however, when one adds the various recent claims from iTunes users about their accounts being hacked and hundreds of dollars being spent on these self-same books. Coincidence? Not likely.
Apple, of course, would never admit to such a security breach, let alone take any responsibility for it, but the firm did go as far as releasing the following statement:
“The developer Thuat Nguyen and his apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns.”
Apple went on to assure people, “Developers do not receive any iTunes confidential customer data when an app is downloaded.”
As a matter of precaution, however, Apple suggested to punters that “If your credit card or iTunes password is stolen and used on iTunes we recommend that you contact your financial institution and inquire about canceling the card and issuing a chargeback for any unauthorized transactions. We also recommend that you change your iTunes account password immediately.”
So much for walled gardens then, eh?