Thousands of Chinese fake iTunes Store gift vouchers are being sold at a fraction of the cost on eBay style sites.
$200 gift cards are being sold for as little as $2.60, according to Chinese music industry website Outdustry.
Chinese online shopping site Taobao, similar to eBay, offers the cards with sellers sending gift voucher codes over Instant Messenger once money has changed hands via Taobao’s online payment system, Alipay, which supports most banks in China.
Users then simply redeem the cards at the Apple iTunes online store.
The owner of the Taobao store, highlighted by the Chinese website, told Outdustry frankly that the gift card codes are created using key-generators, adding that he paid money to hackers to sell the fake codes.
"The hackers are based in China, but I don’t know if they do the same thing in eBay”, the Taobao shopkeeper told Outdustry.
"Most of our customers use iTunes store for music, then Apple applications and films. iPod games are least popular."
The Apple iPhone is still only available on the grey market in China, although Apple representatives are in ongoing talks to secure a Chinese carrier.
Fixing the problem with the pirated iTunes vouchers may prove problematic for Apple because adjusting the key generation algorithm might invalidate genuine gift cards.
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