Beware! Money laundering through iTunes in UK

Normally I do not tend to feature these kind of articles on this blog, as this may tend to impart some negative information to a lot many individuals, but this one is being featured here to make you aware of keeping your finances and your money safe.
12 individuals have recently been charged in UK, with laundering huge amounts of money through iTunes. They use to upload music tracks and put them up for selling through iTunes' digital music delivery services. In total, they were able to launder a total of $300,000 across just 4 months.
Just for your records, if I had scared some iTunes user with this article, this scheme does not reveal a security vulnerability with iTunes or any of other software company's services, this method stands as one of the many ways people use to steal money through credit cards.
If ever you see a third party transaction on your bank statements, just contact your bank and they should be able to help you with getting back your money.

Quattro dead - iAd gets the advantage.

Seems Apple is more keen on its own advertising platform iAds, rather than hovering on third party platforms. In the beginning of 2010, Steve Jobs bought Quattro's mobile advertising platform, but in August'10 (less than 8 months later), Apple has decided to show 'thumbs down' to Quattro due to its degrading market credibility. As per Reuters, Apple has sent an official letter to each existing corporate customer of Quattro, mentioning that the platform will be discontinued by 30th Sept' 2010.
Mr. Michael Chang - CEO Greystripe suggests,  "Apple's decision to drop support for major audience segments on non-Apple platforms is ultimately bad for their advertisers and developers. Advertisers care about audiences, reach and user engagement, not specific platforms." He also mentions, "As the Android audience catches up to iPhone, and Blackberry continues to improve the potential for user engagement, these smartphone platforms will become increasingly important for advertisers."
The Crisp Wireless's CEO, Mr. Boris Fridman suggests that the reason could be Quattro's losing credibility as a cross-platform ad network since the acquisition. He also believes that this loss to Quattro might bring new opportunities for other ad networks, specially on Android smart-phones. Apple's iAd Network have proved to be a capable mobile marketing platform, but it only works on Apple's mobile platforms.

This strategic move may benefit Apple through focusing its resources and efforts in streamlining and improving the iAd Network, and hopefully convert existing Quattro customers to switch over to iAd for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch platforms. The Apple audience is too large to be ignored, but rather than create a single unified, cross-platform marketing campaign, advertisers will have to develop one for iOS, and one for every other platform.

Further Read:

1. Media eating up 50% of your life?

2. Watch Flash videos even on your non-Jailbroken iOS Devices

3. TV meets the web with Google