New York — In the wake of reports swirling around that Apple Inc.’s online iTunes store had been scammed, the company said Tuesday it has barred a Vietnamese iPhone developer from its store and removed his applications from the venue, who it said used other people’s iTunes accounts to purchase his apps.
“Developer Thuat Nguyen and his apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns,” Apple said in a statement.
The company did not disclosed any further details about the matter involving the App Store, which offers free and paid applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, which came to light after iTunes customers complained their accounts had been accessed to buy applications from Nguyen.
Confidential customer data is not shared with developers, the company said, suggesting that users whose accounts may have been exposed change their password and contact their financial institutions.
Nguyen could not be reached for comment. But the California company’s statement followed reports on various technology blogs that iTunes was hit by a scam over the weekend.
According to Engadget.com, which stated that Nguyen had captured 42 of the top 50 titles in the App Store’s book category. Some users reported having hundreds of dollars charged to their accounts, according to Engadget.
Despite that, Apple said the iTunes servers were not exposed. “An extremely small percentage of users, about 400 of the 150 million iTunes users–that is less than 0.0003 percent of iTunes users–were impacted,” an Apple representative said.
That is a minuscule number of patrons compared with Apple having more than 150 million registered users for its iTunes, iBook and App Store marketplaces for purchasing music, e-books, movies and television shows. More than 225,000 applications are in the App store, with more than 5 billion downloaded, according to Apple.
In its brief statement, Apple attempted to pacify potential fears among iTunes customers, stressing that “developers do not receive any iTunes confidential customer data when an app is downloaded.”
Apple is noted for securely controlling which applications can be offered in the store, and developers have complained about the lengthy process. But that approach boosts security, Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin said.
“Here we have one small instance of the Apple app store being gamed a little bit. It is proof to just how good a job Apple has done in terms of curating that app qualification and verification process,” Golvin said. “It has been so rare that its rarity is the newsworthiness.”