Apparently, Apple is having problems with iTunes accounts being hacked and fraudulent charges being made. How do I know? I was suddenly a victim. I checked my email nonchalantly and saw two fraudulent charges of 50$, used to purchase gift cards. After picking up my jaw from the floor, I tried to log into iTunes. No deal, password changed, and obviously my secret word and main email contact was changed too, so I couldn't request a new password. So I started wading through Apple's website in order to contact and get help in getting this fixed ASAP. Something interesting, is that the hacker kept my ROAD address the same, while they changed the city, state, and zip code to something else. The credit card used is not mine, it is my mother's (I found this out when I read out the last four digits of the unfamiliar mastercard # to her). But I have never, ever used her credit card ever, and she never uses my computer ever (password protected and she has her own anyway). She has her own iTunes account, so we'll see if that has been compromised when she gets home. Seriously, something is very much messed up. Anyway, Apple support and getting a live person is a true pain in the butt. Like, it took me a good hour of being on the phone with a computerized voice yammering at me. I'd rather deal with someone who barely spoke English who could at least understand my problem! They opened up an investigation. At least the person I spoke to wasn't foreign, and very courteous. Whew. Here is the thing, I have never responded to any phishing emails, scams, clicked on strange links or ads, and I don't go to malicious websites. I keep my adware, malware, spybot, and antivirus up to date and do checks often. My computer, I just ran scans, is clean as a whistle. In fact, I haven't purchased anything from iTunes in months, which is why this set off HUGE alarm bells when I saw the emails. I did some google fu and found out that this is a very common problem. This is a HUGE thread about it on the Apple Support Boards, which made me go OMG when I saw it. Just googling 'hacked iTunes' or 'fraudulent iTunes purchases' or anything like that pulls up news articles galore. I think Apple is just sweeping the dirt under the rug with this one. Edit to fix link
Oh yes she will be! She told me she just checked the balance this morning and there wasn't anything unusual! She may just cancel the card altogether tonight.
With the foreign people working at places like this... NOT TRYING TO SOUND RACIST OR ANYTHING, but I think that for when you call you should be able to *Press 1 if you Speak English *Press 2 if you speak Spanish *Press 3 if you speak Japanese and so on. So that we dont have to say "What??" A million times and still get nothing done. Out of the two times I called I got a American and a Jap, but everytime my brother had a problem and called he got somebody that sounded like they are an English teacher! Perfect English! Ok... Im done here....
I had the same thing happen to me about a month ago. I had about $20 in credit from a birthday gift card and the hacker used it to buy a game--in Japanese. They had changed my password, security code answer, street and town address but not name or phone number. I found out about it when I got an email head's up from the iStore that someone had ordered from a computer I hadn't authorized--but they still let the order go through. The biggest problem was contacting Apple to stop the sale--it can't be done which is a flaw in their warning system. (If the computer was unauthorized they should have held up the sale until I confirmed it.) At any rate, I contacted Apple and got a refund. Good luck to you.
Quote:I am glad you were able to get a refund. That is really crazy that the purchases happened from an unauthorized computer, but Apple was cool with it. It seems to me that the first step in stopping this from happening is to only let authorized computers make purchases. It looks like this will turn out OK on my end. Caught it quickly enough for the CC charges to immediately be reversed, but the card is still getting canceled. Apple reset my account information and whatnot. I only use iTunes to upload my music onto my iPod, I don't purchase music from them ever. I wish I didn't need the ap. Might be time to jailbreak this iPod touch...
Same thing happened to me this summer. Chinese or Japanese. They started charging $19.99 every hour on the hour. Turned out to be some sort of internet gambling thing. So stressful that I don't even want to talk about it, but it was eventually resolved. I can't even put into words how it made me feel. I canceled all of my cards - ALL - and froze my PayPal in a panic and set up new accounts. Best of luck.
