It all seems innocent enough: Someone received an iTunes gift card for their birthday, but they don't have an iPod, so they're selling it on eBay. And to encourage you to snap it up, they're offering the gift card at a price that's $10 or $20 less than its face value. Sounds like too good a deal to pass up, right? Unfortunately, there's a strong possibility that the gift card was bought with a stolen credit card or was hacked (see "Hacked: $200 iTunes Gift Card for Only $2.60"). For a while, people appeared to be using such gift cards without repercussion. But more recently, Apple seems to be quietly mounting a campaign against fraudulent iTunes gift card offenders.

A few rumors began popping up on forums and blogs across the Web about people whose iTunes accounts were permanently disabled after they purchased content with gift cards bought on eBay. When your account is disabled, you permanently lose access to all of the iTunes Store purchases on your computer (unless you back up your library or keep everything on your iPod/iPhone). One guy reported that he had lost his en­­tire library of iTunes Store content, worth over $5000, after he used multiple $50 iTunes gift cards he bought on eBay.