Yeah I agree but there is still a difference because if I bought this Jack Johnson album with a cracked card, Jack would still get money haha.... Poor iTunes.

Wouldn't it be similar to someone generating your credit card number and then using it?

The true losers here are those that have the legit card that has already been spent.

Those that are the extreme losers are those that get caught up in this and end up looking at bars.

Don't forget that many gift cards are never spent or completely spent. Hence, this may just cut into some of that fund.

although it's true that many people already download from bittorents. it also depends on if the algorithm gets transfered into a "keygen" and posted on the internet, or if a person is keeping it himself and making some money. in all honesty, we got some smart people at Apple, i'm sure they'll come up with a new algorithm, if not then they can talk to Blizzard or something. WoW cards still can't be duplicated or faked or anything.

i am just a little confused. don't these cards have to be activated? you can't just scratch off any card and use the number, there is the activation process that turns these cards on. i am sure that part of the info that gets transmitted back and forth is which merchant is activating them and from where. if so then ultimately the company that apple has contracted to run this aspect of the itunes store can manage this fairly easily. call me confused but whenever i see stories like this i want more facts. sometimes it just doesn't seem to add up with real life.

Yes, the code needs to be activated by Apple, so no there is no keygen for iTunes Cards, but what they do is much easier... they use stolen Credit Cards or Credit Card numbers... they buy legal iTunes Cards (via Apple) and then they sell the iTunes cards on eBay to get the money... of course because the CC is stolen they actually never paid for the iTunes Card...

and they do this since a long long time... so not really news...

Yeah, plain-old stolen credit cards that were used to buy real iTunes cards and then resold to the unsuspecting masses in order to launder the money.

You'd think that Apple and/or the CC vendor would be able to identify some of these issues when people start to buy a bunch of high-value iTune's cards on a single CC.

Then again, one of Apple's costs is fraud. People hate how Apple takes a cut of iTunes music sales, but obviously this type of thing is a real and significant part of their expenses.

This type of thing definitely ends up costing all legit customers of on-line services.

even with gift card, an itunes account with an authorised credit card is compulsory before redemption. therefore apple shouldn't be worried at all should things like this happens. just take the person to court and charge to his credit card

How could you identify them as Chinese? Not American? From their names? IP?

If the hacker call himself 9to5mac, can we say 9to5mac is the hacker doing this?