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Apple's App Store team is looking into claims that the Books category has been "hijacked" by a developer pushing his apps into the top of the charts, a number of blogs are reporting.
There are concerns that apps created by the same company have been http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/04/itunes_app_store_hit_by_de... target="_blank">appearing "as part of fraud activity on [customers'] accounts", according to Apple Insider.
The blog warns that iTunes Store users are "increasingly being targeted in a number of fraud cases", adding "a new wave of very suspicious app purchases appear to have boosted the sales of a single App Store developer to an overwhelming 40 spots of the top fifty apps in the books category.
"The books in question are a low-quality series of mostly Japanese manga titles all published by "developer" Thuat Nguyen, whose publishing company is listed by Apple as "mycompany" with a website of "Home.com."," the blog said.
"It's impossibly unlikely that 80% of the American App Store's book sales were legitimately dominated by sales of shoddy anime book apps that are not localized, appear to violate intellectual property rights, and were all dumped into the App Store at once over a period of a couple days."
Apple Insider goes on to warn that this could damage the manufacturer's reputation by "devaluing the iTunes Store in the minds of users, and eroding Apple's position that the App Store is a carefully curated marketplace that doesn't suffer from the junkware bloat and intellectual property fraud of Google's".
http://www.alexbrie.com/archives/205" target="_blank">App developer Alex Brie writes in his blog that the team is now investigating the case, estimating that so far the activities will have accounted for more than $1m.He writes that he was informed of this by Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple.
Meanwhile, http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/10/07/05/itunes.accounts.at.risk/" target="_blank">ipodnn.com reports that "a purge of books has taken place at the App Store following accusations of illegal activity".
"Dozens of titles" created by 'mycompany', or Nguyen, have now been removed.