“I understand that you’d like to close the account.

There are a couple of options that will allow you to retain full access to the items you purchased that have digital-rights management (DRM) while preventing your account from being used to make additional purchases:

1) You can remove your billing information from your account at any time so that it can’t be used to make purchases. By doing this, you retain the ability to authorize computers to play the items with DRM that you have purchased with the account, and you will still have the account open in case you decide to use it later. Here are the instructions for removing the billing information while keeping the account open:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesWin/7.0/en/691.html

2) The iTunes Store can disable your account, which will prevent it from being used to make purchases, but you will still be able to play the items you purchased with the account. You can also remove your billing information from the account if you wish.

It is also possible to cancel the account, but you may lose the ability to play the items with DRM that you’ve already purchased from the iTunes Store. For example, if your computer is repaired, you may not be able to reauthorize the computer to play your DRM purchases after the repair. Also, you wouldn’t be able to authorize computers that were not already authorized before you canceled the account. You may sign up for a new account in the future, but your new account will not play any of the items purchased with the canceled account (and you can’t reactivate the canceled account).

You should not cancel the account if you want to be sure you can continue to use your iTunes Store purchases that have DRM. I recommend either removing your billing information or disabling the account as described above.

Note that if you have purchased any iTunes Plus content from the iTunes Store, or if you have upgraded any of your DRM purchases to iTunes Plus, canceling your iTunes Store account will not affect your ability to play the iTunes Plus items on existing, new, or repaired computers.

If you would like the iTunes Store to disable (or cancel) the account “{removed}” please reply to this email specifying if you would like it disabled (or canceled) and include the billing address listed on the account. This is necessary for security purposes.“

[Emphasis added]

So as I replied to them:

“Oh the irony! So let’s get this right: you don’t give a toss about security when someone opens an iTunes Store account, so that I could easily have ordered a whole load of albums on their credit card or whatever without you batting an eyelid and yet to cancel it, I have to go through hoops ‘for security purposes’!”

How ridiculous!