stereocourier
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: iTunes store account hacked

I'm posting this just to share my story and get reactions. It's a little detailed but I thought worth sharing.

On November 23, 2010 I purchased a single song from the iTunes store for .99. I used store credit that I had from a gift card I received last year. It was the first purchase I had made since July 2010.

On November 25, 2010 I received a receipt for 2 more separate orders to my account. These were for over $50 in iPhones apps. Here's a sampling of some of the purchases:

1 eREAD isoshu, v1.5, Seller: ChengDu YueTong Internet Information Co. Ltd (17+)
2 Plants vs. Zombies, v1.3, Seller: PopCap Games, Inc. (iDP)
3 Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge, v1.1, Seller: Lucasfilm International Services Inc.
4 Asphalt 5, v1.2.6, Seller: Gameloft (9+)
5 Let's Golf!® 2, v1.0.1, Seller: Gameloft (4+)
6 Frames & FX for Photos, v2.5.1, Seller: Imikimi, LLC (12+)
7 Stenches: A Zombie Tale of Trenches, v1.0.1, Seller: Thunder Game Works (9+)

I do not have a credit card linked to my account, so these were made using my store credit.

I have only 1 computer authorized for my account (my personal home computer). I live alone and no one else touches my Powerbook but me. I also DO NOT own an iPhone, so I would have no interest in apps.

After I saw these bizarre purchases, I checked my account. I noticed 2 strange things: My account information had changed: My street address was correct, but city, state and zip had changed to: Towson, MD 21286-7840. I have never lived in Maryland. Also, I noticed that my password recovery answer had changed to "Murray" in response to a question about my mother's maiden name. That's decidedly NOT my mother's maiden name. Also, my birthdate had changed to an incorrect month and day.

I immediately changed my password and my recovery question/answer challenge.

I reported problems on all of these purchases and also contacted iTunes Account Support by e-mail.

Within 24 hours I received an e-mail from "Vicki" at iTunes Customer Support. She wrote:

"When reviewing over your account "name@domain.net" and the two reported orders, it shows that the content purchased within them was acquired from the computer that is currently authorized for your iTunes account. So I strongly advise that you do consult with those in your household regarding the purchases made, and the charges that resulted from those purchases."

Further:

"I have gone and reversed the charges for the two orders....You will see a store credit in three to five business days....Please note that this is a one-time exception, as the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions state that all sales are final."

I am pleased that Apple is refunding my store credit and replied so quickly.

However, it is simply impossible that these purchases were made from my computer. Again, my Powerbook is the only computer I have ever authorized to access my account, and I am the only person with access to it.

I am not sure how this happened. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 28, 2010 3:45 PM

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stereocourier

Q: iTunes store account hacked

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  • by IamDewman,

    IamDewman IamDewman Apr 9, 2011 4:38 PM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 9, 2011 4:38 PM in response to stereocourier
    yup i just noticed that April 6th this same crap was charged to me for 19.99 and 9.99 for stupid chips. hello i play real poker, im not going to waste my time on fake poker

  • by loonygoose,

    loonygoose loonygoose Apr 10, 2011 3:43 AM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 10, 2011 3:43 AM in response to stereocourier
    Another victim here. Over $150 in Gift card credit emptied here on poker chips on the 8/4/11

  • by RobinBassett,

    RobinBassett RobinBassett Apr 10, 2011 8:22 AM in response to Carl Johnson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 10, 2011 8:22 AM in response to Carl Johnson
    This just happened to me, and I don't know what to do because Apple conducts business with 'phantom' customer service. Try to talk with anyone and you get the automated run-around. How do I get them to refund me for this and what do I need to do to keep my account from being hacked again. many thanks for any input.
    帝國 Online, 23400銀幣禮包, Seller: GAMEISLIVE CORPORATION LIMITED $19.99

  • by Renac71,

    Renac71 Renac71 Apr 10, 2011 1:44 PM in response to bush817
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 10, 2011 1:44 PM in response to bush817
    Same thing just happened to me yesterday. Street address was the same but the rest was changed to Towsend MD, 21286-7840. 德州撲克 3.0.ipa was the app that I found in my account (texas hold'em app). Credit card information was wiped out and they used up most of my credits.

    I got charged 49.99 and 9.99 for "chips" in the "free" app. I was on a camping trip while this was charged to my account. I didn't have any electronics with me so it wasn't me. Apple needs to ban this developer and pull the kill switch on their apps. What are they waiting for?

    Itunes security is compromised. They needs to fix it now.

    I've sent off a note and hopefully, I'll get back my credit.

  • by Brandy Evans,

    Brandy Evans Brandy Evans Apr 10, 2011 7:28 PM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Apr 10, 2011 7:28 PM in response to stereocourier
    Wow, I don't know if I'm glad to see I'm not the only one or ****** to find out that this is such a widespread problem and Apple hasn't figured out what's going on yet!

    I bought my iPad 2 three weeks ago, got $50 in App Store cards a couple days later. I did enter them via my iPad, since someone asked about that. Today I went to check my balance, which should have been in the $20 range, and it was 90 cents! This morning someone downloaded 13 apps, half of which are in Chinese, for a total of $19.17. Luckily I did not have a credit card listed, so once they ran the gift card down they were finished.

    I changed my password immediately and contacted support to try and get a refund - now I will be severely ****** if they don't give it to me, seeing as how this is clearly a known problem. I have ONLY logged into this account through the iPad App Store in the past several months. The last time I even downloaded anything on iTunes was last May, and I certainly haven't given the password out over email or anything.

    Now I'm not sure how to proceed. I'd planned to only buy apps via gift card, to avoid a dozen $1-5 charges on my credit card, but are those the source of the security breach? But then, I sure don't want to give them my credit card info after this. Grrrr, I just handed Apple $500 for this iPad and now I feel like I can't even safely buy software for it.

    Btw, none of my other account info had been changed (address, etc). No changes except that the 13 apps had been bought.

    Message was edited by: Brandy Evans

  • by MichaelTLH,

    MichaelTLH MichaelTLH Apr 11, 2011 6:11 AM in response to Brandy Evans
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 6:11 AM in response to Brandy Evans
    Yeah, I'd planned on using Gift Cards as well, but it must be that they can just waltz in and gobble up any time used on them, so I may not even bother with that.

    It's a shame that Apple won't A: acknowledge there's a problem (but who can blame them really... "Hey, just FYI people can steal from you and take all your store credit and we can't do anything. Our bad.") and B: close whatever security breach. They have GOT to know about this. Canned e-mails reminding us to change our passwords are just insulting.

  • by Ageless Nana,

    Ageless Nana Ageless Nana Apr 11, 2011 7:59 AM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 7:59 AM in response to stereocourier
    The same thing happened to me. I used a gift card because my account was hacked and my credit card charged. As a "Boomer" I have loved having access to great music, movies and books, but cannot afford any longer to be ripped off.

    After the last episode, I did everything support advised to secure my account. It is hard to believe that someone from the inside does not have inroads to hacking so many accounts as I have read in response to this post.

    It cannot be the fault of so many of us that we are the ones so irresponsible to cause this to happen to us. My event was identical to all others with the Towson, MD detail and gift card money stolen. I will cancel my account after this third strike if I do not feel that they are studying the problem to remedy such a blatant move to rip off so many people. I can certainly use the money to buy songs elsewhere.

    No one else has used my computer and if they are finding the information in their research that it came from this computer, then chalk it up to a clever crook who knows how to manipulate the system to make it say so.

  • by dblCHeeZ,

    dblCHeeZ dblCHeeZ Apr 11, 2011 8:08 AM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 8:08 AM in response to stereocourier
    I have just been compromised as well (Purchases made on April 10th). The remaining balance of my daughters gift card is now gone. All the purchases were for applications in foreign languages I don't speak. All from the same Seller.

    宝宝胎教音乐课堂, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)
    宝宝轻松睡眠摇篮曲, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)
    中国历史文化故事集【有声读物】, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)
    妈妈讲故事-宝宝学成语, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)
    唐诗宋词【有声书】, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)
    中外童话故事【有声书】, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)
    宝宝学说话--边听边学, v1.0, Seller: Yang Yun (4+)

    I have reported these as problems but I am concerned that in the drop down list there is no option to choose that these purchases were not made by myself.

  • by arcane93,

    arcane93 arcane93 Apr 11, 2011 8:12 AM in response to Brandy Evans
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 8:12 AM in response to Brandy Evans
    I agree, I wouldn't leave gift cards or my credit card number on my account while all of this is going on. At this point, I'll only redeem a gift card if I intend to spend the entire balance immediately, and I'm telling anyone who has bought me an iTunes gift card in the past not to get me another one.

    What I've been doing since this happened is putting my credit card number on my account when I want to buy something, and then immediately removing it afterward. I go into my account (which you can do on your device by using "Account" button on the bottom of the "Featured/New" screen in the app store on the iPhone at least -- a horrible, unintuitive place to put it, if you ask me), put in my credit card info, make my purchase, and then go back into my account and change my credit card back to "None" immediately afterward. It's a huge pain, but it keeps my potential exposure to these issues as minimal as possible.

    It's also had the side benefit of cutting down on my random app purchases -- I have to really want the app for it to be worth going to all of that effort. So it's actually saved me some money. Of course, on the same token, it's also cut into Apple's profit margin from me, as I've been buying less because of it. Their loss if they won't address the issue.

  • by StoneyPA,

    StoneyPA StoneyPA Apr 11, 2011 12:42 PM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 12:42 PM in response to stereocourier
    Hacked here as well last night apparently. I had a $10 gift card in my account. Logged on today to download any podcasts that I subscribe to and found my balance was now $0.01. They bought some kind of platinum currency for an MMO app. The hacker did the same thing... changed my city, state, ZIP and phone to... Towson, MD 2????, 654-6543210 and just noticed that my credit card info is wiped clean.

    How can this not yet be exposed in the media since it seems to be frequently happening? iTunes security is a mess.

  • by StoneyPA,

    StoneyPA StoneyPA Apr 11, 2011 2:23 PM in response to StoneyPA
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 2:23 PM in response to StoneyPA
    BTW, I'm finished buying apps until they acknowledge and rectify the security breach publicly. It's not worth the hassle and credit risk. I personally think they're getting in a different way than stealing passwords...

  • by Ageless Nana,

    Ageless Nana Ageless Nana Apr 11, 2011 4:40 PM in response to stereocourier
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 4:40 PM in response to stereocourier
    This is my letter in response to support who made me feel they did a special favor my giving me a refund. My account is being "investigated" so that they can enable it for me.

    -------------
    I have changed the password. I change it often for iTunes and still my account is hacked. I deserve to have the money refunded. It was a gift from my husband and it is not my fault that it was stolen. There should be no need for an investigation of me. You need to be investigating who hacked into the thousands of iTunes account holders that posted on the iTunes message board.

    If you come back and tell me that the hacking came from my computer, which is not the case, I will fill every message board known to the world with the unprofessional way this event was handled. So do not hit any automated button that will tell me that. I was told that the last two times before this event that the action came from my computer. Twice I had to change my credit card because of unethical use of my accounts by someone else.

    So this is the deal. READ THIS EMAIL CAREFULLY BEFORE HITTING ANY KEYS THAT WILL SEND AUTOMATED MESSAGES.

    Do not tell me someone in my house did this on my computer


    Do not make me feel guilty for the refund I deserved


    Do not make me feel as if you are going to great lengths to investigate this action unless you are going to tell me who did to us and how he/she will be prosecuted.


    Do not bother to reassure me that it is not from the inside of Apple. It is more likely one of your people did this to the thousands of iTunes users than it could be someone in all of our families.


    Just let me know when I can get into my account so I can spend my gift money and then never order anything ever again.

    Thank you for your attention and for the refund.

    ----------------------

    Whew Be wanting to do that for a while. I feel better...

  • by StoneyPA,

    StoneyPA StoneyPA Apr 11, 2011 6:09 PM in response to Ageless Nana
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2011 6:09 PM in response to Ageless Nana
    Good job Ageless Nana. I always heard Apple's support was supposed to be "the best", but in my recent experience, I think they fall far short of that.

  • by dwd3885,

    dwd3885 dwd3885 Apr 12, 2011 8:31 AM in response to StoneyPA
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 12, 2011 8:31 AM in response to StoneyPA
    My iTunes account was hacked yesterday. They removed my credit card info and used $7 of my $10 remaining on my gift card. Contacted iTunes yesterday. I will immediately spend the remainder of my $10 and not purchase anything on iTunes again. It's a good thing I have an android phone, but with all my Macs and iPods and iPad, there's no way I cannot have iTunes account.

    Message was edited by: dwd3885

  • by trailbossc,

    trailbossc trailbossc Apr 12, 2011 8:46 AM in response to dwd3885
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 12, 2011 8:46 AM in response to dwd3885
    Well here we are. 15 pages deep of people being hacked and not a single response or post by an Apple employee, even though some of the techs claim to be aware of this thread in their responses to restore your account. Do they care?
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