Other Weird happenings with iPhone purchase/restore at retail Apple Store

[rworne]

Wife got a new iPhone 11 after upgrading her 6s. The whole transaction went smooth enough until the in-store restore from iCloud happened.

That went well enough until one interesting item popped up during the restore:

"Please enter the iTunes Password for "itunes520.blogspot.com".

WTF? We have no such account.

There's no webpage for that site on blogspot, but there is for "itunesmusic520" at the same domain. For the curious, it's a Hong-Kong based AAC pirate website, which may or may not be related to the above prompt.

It was repeatedly prompting for a password for this account while the rest of the apps were updating. So we left the Apple Store and let the phone finish downloading apps when we arrived home. At home, no such prompts appeared. This was all on a factory fresh phone, just powered up, on the Apple Store's WiFi network, and no apps running on it (as it just rebooted from an iCloud restore and was beginning to download all the apps).

Anyone see anything like this?

 

[Caesars]

I’ve only seen that type of thing when I used someone else’s iTunes on someone else’s computer to get music I didn’t buy on my phone.

(Not accusing you of “stealing” music)

 

[AndrewR23]

I once got a refurbished replacement from Apple and when I turned it on, it asked me for some strange email. The phone was also scratched. Apple gave me a new one and it was fine

 

[rworne]

This wasn't refurbished, it was new and sealed. As I said, the popup login only appeared while at the Apple Store. It did not appear anytime after.

The restore occurred at the store (iCloud info) and several apps downloaded. We let the rest of them download at home. All the apps on the phone are accounted for - usually these pop up with a "shared" account. She does have a few apps that were back from the pre-family sharing days when we used the same iTunes account. But those apps were accounted for. Since it was asking for a password only - and it was a web address as the account, not an email, it looked rather odd.

We have little need for pirated Chinese music files - if that site is related.