It is suprising how this got through Apple’s stringent process of approving apps. It was reported that hundreds
of customers had apparently become victims of a scam in which a phantom developer named Thyat Nguyen hacked into their accounts and used them to artificially inflate the ratings and sales for his book applications, or apps.
There were multiple reports about customers complaining about the scam after two rival publishers noticed this and raised an alarm. The publishers noticed a sudden upsurge in the popularity of the developer’s apps. The developer deleted himself later.
A product called Conan 3 had customers complaining that their iTunes accounts have been hacked and their were purchases made by the hacker. The hacker was buying his own app to drive up ratings and the number of downloads.
MacRumors reported the issue and a post in it read, “On Friday there was $1,400 missing from my checking account. I checked with my bank and it was all from unauthorised iTunes purchases. I notified Apple on Friday when there were still over 1,200 pending downloads. They did nothing except tell me they don’t do refunds. They didn’t even stop the illegal downloads. As we speak, someone is downloading songs from my account and I can’t do anything about it.”
It is speculated that hundreds of Apple customers must have been victims to this. Apple has been in news for sloppy security with last month’s iPad security breach where personal information of iPad owners was leaked.
Apple did not comment on this matter. So if you plan to use iTunes, never store your credit card information in its account.