my itunes isnt working

See About App Store and iTunes Store availability - Apple Support for issues you might have accessing the iTunes Store on older version of OS X. I don't have details of what servers iTunes connects to, but the danger with an old build is that it may have outdated targets baked in.

tt2

I second the OP. I have 3 systems, Lion, Mavericks and High Sierra with the 1st 2 of then using actively. iTunes in Lion started showing this error dialog periodically while making connection to iTunes Store and me clicking on "Update Genius". iTunes in Mavericks started generating "SSL Handshake failed, error -9836" in Console, while sending Genius in the endless loop of fetching data. In both versions I lost ability to listen to preview of songs in iTunes Store (although I didn't regarding video podcasts) as well as purchase songs.

Today I noticed that I still getting this error however it seems I regained the purchase function in iTunes 10 and iTunes 11. As for the previews, instead of the loop all I get is silence while the song info is displayed on the LCD screen of iTunes Player. Genius is still nonworking and I get this error every time I launch the app which is annoying. Even disabling iTunes in "Parental control" doesn't make the alert go away.

BTW, monitoring outbound connections I noticed iTunes make connection to iWeb Technologies Inc (iWEB-BLK-06). What is that?

App Store on Mac is OK. Seems, Apple changed either certificates or a TLS protocol version which is never good for us.

I read that article but it explores a different topic, that is, the new way of changing payment info: I still was able to purchase and use iTunes Store and Genius in full capacity since then, it's just I had to visit the web-site in the event (very rare) of emerged necessity to modify my payment info. And even then that support document refers to OSes older than Mavericks which I have this error popping up in as well.

The most realistic explanation is that they implemented a new TSL connection version or renewed expired certificates (or both) that both versions relied on.

I used to buy apps from within iTunes without the need to touch my iPhone with iOS 12 and later either download while using the iPhone or – if I had the High Sierra partition as a current working one – download to the computer and then sync to the phone. In all of the versions I could purchase music and that was even more important.

Losing iTunes Store hurts but even then I don't know how to disable iTunes from scanning to send signals to the network, in order to stop that alert dialog.

What version of iTunes on what version of macOS/OS X? Have you tried reinstalling iTunes assuming you're on High Sierra or something earlier?

tt2