Kevin earlier reported that Chinese developers are masters of not only cloning, but recently have become masters of cracking iTunes gift card algorithm too. The same report said that Taopao, an online shopping site in China is selling thousands of iTunes gifts cards worth $200 for as cheap as $2.6. These are cards illegitimately created after hacking the code algorithm Apple use for generating the gift vouchers. 

It seems the sales of these cracked gift cards is not doing so well according to what Appleinsider is reporting.  The developer of TiltMeter Pro got a mail from a person using yahoo mail account making a rather odd offer. The content of the mail reads:

“I’ve been taking a look into your application and have an offer to you. I have many itunes gift certificates for itunes usa , canada and uk to make purchases through the iTunes store. I can buy your product as many times as you want and can share earnings 50 - 50.”

The scammer is asking for 50/50 split of the 70% revenue the developer is going to get from the bogus purchase made through cracked iTunes gift card. To actually make this proposal work, the scammer need to set up thousands of iTunes account or equivalent to the number of purchases he need to make and then login to each accounts and make the purchase. Wow, that sounds strenuous and long. In fact the purchase might be automated, not sure though.

For Apple, it might take some efforts to detect manipulation of purchases made by registered iTunes users as there are more than 75 million active accounts, but it won’t be impossible. Well, I suggest, it’s better to grow in a fair way than to try out what is illegitimate and bear the embarrassment of being chucked out of the development platform. You may also never get the money you actually earned from your applications if you are busted. Stay legitimate!

Via Appleinsider