It’s the equivalent of trying to commit a crime in broad daylight, so it’s not surprising that it took only a short amount of time for Chinese officials to react to the sale of stolen ITunes accounts on a Chinese e-tailer.
The site is Taobao.com, and it’s the Chinese version of Amazon, the largest online store in the country with more than 370 million users.
One of the more curious items for sale on Taobao were Chinese iTunes accounts. Nothing is expected to be suspicious at first, because the point of the sale is to get an account that lets users buy iTunes tracks at Chinese prices. Over there, song downloads only cost about a half a yuan, or about eight cents.
However, after reports of people’s iTunes accounts being hacked, it was discovered that these accounts weren’t exactly being sold on the up and up. So, in fact, those who purchased an account could get as many songs as they wanted without paying a dime. It was all being charged to the account holder.
All iTunes account sales on Taobao are now taken down and banned from being relisted. In a statement, the online site said it is looking out for the protection of its customers. However, many Chinese customers are now unable to get iTunes accounts of their own, because the country has a large population of people without credit cards.
