“Phantom downloads” are Apple’s latest app store headache in China.
Users of China’s iTunes app store noticed a disquieting development in recent weeks: their accounts were showing they had purchased apps—mostly Chinese mobile games—that had never heard of before. According to Tech in Asia, the phantom downloads may have been “the work of an app-promotion company that somehow gained access to user accounts.”
It wouldn’t be the first time that Apple’s mobile platform has run into security problems in China: developers there have complained that they have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fraud. But it’s not just criminals trying to take advantage of iTunes users—it’s the users themselves.
