22 Suspects Arrested For Selling Apple User Data On The Black Market

Yesterday in the coastal province of Zhejiang in China, Police arrested 22 Apple distributors. They all have been accused of reselling Apple user data on the black market, to anyone willing to pay the designated amount of money. These Apple distributors used internal company databases to get hold of important information like Apple IDs, Passwords, phone numbers etc. This information was then sold to the black-market customer for a nominal price that ranged between 10 yuan to 180 yuan or $1.50 to $26.

According to the Zhejiang Police, the distributors have collectively made around 50 million yuan by selling illicit information about the company's Customers on the black market. This means that the distributors were able to make $7.36 million before being stopped by the police.

The Cupertino Giant has always been an advocate of high-security privileges that saves their customers against situations like these. Nobody knows why or how the Apple distributors were given such high-ranking privileges that allowed them to view and use such sensitive information. Although this is not the first-time Apple IDs have been sold on the black market in China, this is definitely the first time someone has been able to dig this deep to get what they want.  Information that was being sold previously, was acquired through traditional methods, like phishing and hacking.

'Turkish Crime Family' tried extorting money from Apple earlier this year, by claiming access to millions of user Accounts. The crime family supposedly was in a very powerful situation and could have wiped out millions of Apple devices at the click of a button. Although the hackers said that they were paid by Apple, the company had another explanation altogether. According to the company, the information was obtained by the hackers using previously compromised third-party applications and services,