Unauthorized purchase on my iTunes account

I wish I was this fortunate. Woke up to seven emails - one saying Kingdom Live was purchased on an unauthorized device. Six receipts totaling $400 came next. I called PayPal, my bank, and emailed iTunes legitimately the second I woke up Friday morning (groggy voice and all). The charges were reported as unauthorized and the iTunes rep told me that PayPal had already closed the charges. Today at work, I checked my online banking and the $400 worth of charges were being processed. Checked my disputes from PayPal and they are still awaiting the seller's response. They even sent ANOTHER email for each charge. $400 is a lot of money and a lot of money for me to be out while iTunes takes their sweet time replying. It makes me so mad because I've been a loyal customer for many years and I NEVER thought I would have to worry about my security being breached. I mean, I know stuff happens but the fact that this has been happening for years and they refuse to acknowledge it really makes me mad. Have I mentioned I'm mad?

Let's hope I can get my money refunded. ***** that a hard working 22-year-old just trying to make ends meet has to deal with this BS.

I did a lengthy amount of research on this when I posted my comment and people with prepaid cards were also large targets! It's insane. They seemed to have been refunded but they were targets nonetheless.

Sunday night I wanted a CD for $9.99. I went as far as to buy an iTunes gift card for $10 and use it immediately. My advice would be to buy in small denominations and load up $10 at a time.

Following up on my case, I spoke with an Apple representative today who told me that PayPal had requested charge backs for my fraudulent purchases. PayPal, however, never informed me of this. I am being left completely in the dark. This whole ordeal is a nightmare and it's awful that we have to continuously worry about this because Apple refuses to accept and acknowledge that they have consistent security breach issues. Not to mention the chief of security just resigned. Such a red flag for Apple. It's disappointing.

I ran into the same issue this morning. Contact PayPal easy, getting through to Apple was painful. Now I'm waiting to see if my charges get reverse. It seems Apple has been having this issue for awhile.

What bank do you use? The day the charges were cleared on my account (Tuesday, November 8), I called Bank of America and filed a claim against those charges. Yesterday, the charges were reversed and I got my money back. I swear BoA was a godsend in this situation. I think I almost cried this morning when I saw my bank account was back to normal.

In any event, I would give your bank a call when the charges clear and see what they can do. PayPal is STILL trying to resolve the issue, although now that it has been 7 days with no response from iTunes/Apple they are now reviewing the claims. I called PayPal on Wednesday night and the representative said that 99% of the time, large companies like this do NOT respond to claims and therefore you have to wait the 7 response days allotted in order for PayPal to take the next step themselves. However, now that I have my money back I'm not sure how to go about not receiving it again from PayPal. I don't want to cancel my claims but I don't want to be refunded twice (as nice as having an extra $400 would be).

My advice would be to call your bank as soon as those charges clear and try to get them to resolve it. PayPal is really as helpful as they can be, but the process is a long one and seems even longer when you've had such a large amount of money taken from you.

Wow didn't know this problem was common, I thought I was the only one.

I just ordered an iphone4s online and the next day i start getting these purchase emails from itunes about a couple of chinese apps.

I've yet to get answers from apple, so I guess i should contact paypal.

thanks

@PDADoc

Don't read too much into that last line regardnig their terms and conditions. They put that language in there to prevent abuse from people purchasing expensive applications and quickly asking for a refund, so that they essentially get it for free. Apple's in the business of making money, and processing refunds like that actually cost them a net loss.

But as you explained, this was clearly a fraudulent purchase. I'm sure Apple will *always* take those seriously and you'll never be stuck with a bad purchase from someone else.

Just curious, was your iTunes account password the same as any other account password you have for other services, like email for example, or was your iTunes password unique? It may not have been a security problem on iTunes' end, but rather a breach somewhere else that leaked your account information. For example, if you had a Playstation account during the hack earlier in the year and you used that same password for iTunes, it's possible someone just went through that list trying them in iTunes one by one until they got a match.

Thanks i've reported it to paypal.

My ID and password is unique only to itunes so theres no possiblity that it leaked out from another account. Unless somebody hacked my iphone or somebody is leaking personal info at HQ.

I really thought it was somebody at the factory using my iphone4s to buy stuff since it happened the next day i ordered iphone4s online at apple.com. Theres a thread here somewhere I just posted about it.

Its weird because I've never had any identity theft or credit card fraud online for the 13 years i've been using the internet.

I'm guessing its somebody is leaking personal infomation in the company? Maybe in China? If so these things are not uncommon there...

I hope Apple is looking it to it.

In response to PDADoc: That last line does make me uneasy as well. We are victims here, not offenders. I must say though that despite the fact that my iTunes rep was friendly, she wasn't exactly resourceful or apologetic and her efforts did not resolve my question. It seems as though no matter who I turned to (aside from PayPal), my matter was greatly misunderstood.

In response to Bkondo: 10 days later and I am still awaiting resolution from PayPal. I've had my money back thanks to Bank of America for 4 days now. Once again, I would highly recommend contacting your bank once the charges have cleared and getting it resolved that way first so you're not out the sum of money that was taken from you. In my case, I was out $400 and was getting close to not being able to pay all of my bills. If I hadn't turned to my bank I would be late with my payments. I have savings to fall back on, but I'd rather not dip into that if I don't have to (and I shouldn't have to because Apple/iTunes should be taking better care of their customers and ensuring that security breaches aren't this easy!). iTunes will NOT reply to the claims from what a rep told me and you will be waiting weeks for the money. PayPal has been reviewing my claims for 4 days now since the deadline for iTunes to reply has been passed.

It's awful that it's such a long process for most because of something that could have easily been prevented.