The unlocked iTunes account is publicly available

Thousands of Apple iTunes accounts were stolen and blatantly displayed publicly on Taobao, China's largest selling site.

Thousands of iTunes accounts are stolen and sold publicly.

The AFP news agency conducted an investigation on Taobao and found that many branch stores were publicly offering iTunes accounts for only 30 yuan ($ 4.5), allowing them to download articles. Songs, games, movies and other products worth up to 30 USD through Apple 's online entertainment store.

The Global Times reports that about 50,000 unauthorized iTunes accounts are being displayed on Taobao at prices ranging from 1 yuan to 200 yuan. Thousands of them have been sold in the past few months.

The advertisement on Taobao comes with a statement that Taobao is not liable for products sold, as well as for the authenticity of those products.

In a statement to AFP, Taobao said it had " all reasonable and necessary measures to protect consumers' rights " and would do nothing unless a major request was received. mode requires removing that ad. " At this point, we have not received any information from Apple or any of the individuals associated with iTunes accounts that are in violation of our sales guidelines," the company said. firm ".

Experts say hackers have directly cracked users' iTunes accounts that are used to storing passwords , or stealing information from foreign credit cards to register new iTunes accounts . offer for sale.

Internet security expert Brian Krebs said: " If the computer system that executes the transaction is infected with the trojan, it will not take long to exploit so many accounts ."

The Global Times quoted a representative of the customer department at one of Taobao 's branches: " Of course those accounts are hacked, if not, how cheap are they? " buyers of those hacked accounts are also advised to use them only for 24 hours - before account holders actually discover and disable their credit cards.

Apple has not yet commented on this incident. In July, Apple increased the security system for iTunes , requiring users to regularly check the credit card's CCV code every time a transaction was made on a new computer.

At this point, Apple advises users who have stolen iTunes passwords or credit card passwords to quickly contact the financial department to change the lost password .

According to a report by Symantec Security Software , nearly two-thirds of web users worldwide are victims of some form of high-tech crime. China is the country with the worst tech crime situation in the world, with 83% of web users being victims of this type of crime. Followed by India and Brazil at 76%, followed by the United States with 73%.