As some of our readers may know, an official iOS Developer Account from Apple costs $99 per year. That grants you access to many tools and features, one of which is testing out the latest iOS betas on your devices. A standard account is given 99 slots to register testing devices that can officially run the latest iOS betas. As I’m sure some of you have heard (or maybe even used), there are some websites who have been offering up their extra slots to regular users at a price (usually somewhere between $5 and $15) so they can get in on the new features of iOS 5 before its release this fall. Apple has never been a fan of this “abuse” of developer privileges.

Some unofficially registered users are reporting that their devices have been locked out without warning. From early reports it looks like Apple has identified some users who are not official developers that are running the beta, and have restricted access to their iOS devices. The account holders who have sold these UDID slots have been sent cease and desist letters from Apple explaining that their actions have violated the Apple Developer terms of agreement, and that their account has been flagged. For the users, it means that they will have to restore the device to the latest iOS 4 build (which may prove difficult).