Apple

The Redmond Pie website is reporting that Apple may be banning jailbroken iPhones from the App Store. Two people have reported that their iPhones have been banned for “security reasons”; they discovered this when trying to connect to the App Store.

According to the screenshots they have provided, the Apple ID itself is banned, which means that those users are most likely banned from accessing the App Store using iTunes as well. It’s not clear if their iTunes Store accounts are totally blocked, or if this just applies to iPhone app purchases.

Since these reports are merely anecdotal for now, we will have to wait and see if more users of jailbroken iPhones are blocked from the App Store before being able to confirm this. It is possible that these “security reasons” are related to other issues, such as a credit card fraud probe of the iTunes Store, or a similar issue regarding fraudulent gift cards, which has been circulating for some time.

We have discussed the risks of jailbreaking an iPhone many times, notably in our Year in Mac Security 2009 report. It seems that Apple, unable to prevent jailbreaking as such, is shutting a different door, which may make people think twice before jailbreaking their phones.