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It was all over the news about a month ago, itunes accounts being hacked with Apple indicating that only about 400 people had been effected. I didn't worry and that was my mistake. Here is a warning for everyone.
I don't have an iphone, ipad, or ipod but I did create an itunes account back in 2005 when it came preloaded on the laptop I bought. I linked it to my paypal account and only used it a couple of times, the last time being back in 2007, and then forgot about it. Fast forward to yesterday when I was online with my newest laptop, that didn't even have itunes on it BTW.
I received an email receipt from paypal for a small itunes purchase. I was confused so I went to paypal to check it out, thinking that account was compromised. While I did that I got a second email for another purchase. I was frantic because paypal connects to my bank account and I can't afford to have it drained. I couldn't remove my bank as a funding source or close my paypal account so I went online looking for help. By the time I realized it was an itunes issue 2 more transactions went through, so I logged onto my account, remove my financial info, change my password, and my user id. That seemed to stop any more transactions from going through but all told "I" purchased over 40 various apps, some multiple times, totaling over $120. While online I ran into posts from countless others who had experienced the same thing, which makes me think that 400 number is just a pipe dream.
I've filed claims with paypal and contacted itunes by email, but of course it happened on a Friday night so nothing will be looked at until next week. But the important thing to know is that I wasn't a victim of a phishing scam, a trojan, a bad app, a keylogger, a weak password, or any other "end user" problem. I just had an itunes account with financial info attached.
Please don't save CC or other financial info on your itunes account until this problem is addressed by Apple.
Thanks for the heads up about this, Ceece. Somehow I missed this story when it was on the news (because of my work schedule, I don't get to see the evening news as much as I'd like to).
I just removed the credit card info that was on file for my iTunes account.
I have been dealing with something similar but not related to itunes. I have a paypal account that I have not used in three years but suddenly got emails about account settings changes, one of which was language preference (chinese to english). I also got an email about my account being restricted or limited because of third party access. This is a security measure of theirs apparently. There has been phishing emails that were very similar to the email I got.
I checked with my banks and everything seems to be fine. I tried to check my account on paypal but was prompted to verify my complete banking account number. All I want to do is cancel the account but can't do it online without verifying my account number. Needless to say, I have not verified my account number fearing it was a scam (even though this was through the paypal website that I checked). This is really frustrating. I probably will not be doing any more business with paypal, ebay, etc. Amazon, Newegg, and Tiger Direct are probably going to be the exception.
I suggest the OP do a credit check to see if there may be any fraud going on. I need to run a check on my credit this upcoming week. I'll probably call PayPal about the issue and see if they can cancel the account for good.
Apparently this latest attack it targeting itunes accounts that were set up with paypal as the funding source. Maybe the vulnerable spot has something to do with the billing agreements, especially the old ones set up 3-4-5-years ago. EVEN IF you have since changed to using a CC the billing agreement is still "active". I know my itunes/paypal billing agreement didn't even show up on the paypal site, but people say if you call paypal they can see if it's active on your account or not. Twitter is abuzz with it all. I wonder if Apple will release a statement?
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