Better take your credit card information off Itunes/AppStore people, it’s been massively hacked and there are cumulating reports of people complaining and reporting stolen money. Apple “security” is non-existent. The hackers are robbing people of money through the credit cards/debit cards/bank accounts linked to your Itunes/AppStore account:
And from one of the Apple fanboi forums:
Many more where those quotes come from. Steve Jobs’ Jesus powers are not a replacement for good security. And all Apple’s “security” is Steve Jobs’ halo. And I bet you that Apple and Steve Jobs are going to deny everything and deflect all the blame onto the customer for being stupid like with the shitty reception on their iPhone4.
Not entirely correct. If you report the transaction as fraudulent to your credit card, it will not be paid. Apple will cooperate the them to investigate it. They can also disable the account so that it cannot be used until it all gets sorted out.
It is Credit Fraud, so you report it to your credit card company and it is handled from there. Just like if your credit card is used with Amazon.com or at Walmart.
That’s not going to help the Apple fanboi I quoted who linked his Itunes account to his chequing account and lost “$1400” or those who linked debit cards. And you will still be out at least $50 minimum through your credit card because you are legally obligated.
Thanks for the info. I will look at my iTunes account to see if there is any unexpected activity. That first link was quite informative, and it is probably high time I changed that password.
Your tone is a little alarmist and not helped by the fact that the second example given was posted February 3, 2008.
Check the other pages of that thread for more recent posts about stolen money from iTunes accounts. It goes from 2008 to the present. Here’s one from today:
And you should be very alarmed because in many cases, you will not get your money back.
I guess i am safe, not only did I never register a card with them, last activity on my account was back in early 2009 … other than some free podcasts I get from PBS. I like the ability to buy music as a download, but I like the oddball stuff and emusic is a better fit for me.
I dunno, I spoke to an acquaintance the other day who was complaining that he saw a purchase from the iTunes store on his credit card and he didn’t even have an iTunes store account. If so, it would appear that they didn’t get his CC information from hacking Apple, but rather got it from someplace else and used it on an Apple site. The way I figure it, when you consider such things, if you use a stolen CC at a site where you download shit and aren’t having it mailed to you, you’re not giving them an address where they can come looking for you. Of course, these days they can check out IP addresses and all that shit, but it still makes it a lot more difficult to find you.
I don’t have an iTunes store account either, although I have considered it and other options. I guess I already have roughly 5,000 songs on my computer, I’m a bit older, and I’ve worked with computers for 30 years and have experienced data loss, so I very much like having hard copies of things I buy.
Not so with these hackings of iTunes accounts. If you read the various news postings and Apple fanboy forums, you will see that many of them can see what was purchased by someone else using their account. It’s not just credit card numbers, but also debit cards and bank accounts that are linked to iTunes. And if you read the postings, you will notice that it is all centred around stolen money through iTunes. The victims are not seeing purchases/stolen money going through any other place. If I had your credit card number and not just hacked an iTunes account, why in the world would I go buy useless apps from Apple instead of taking an easier route and buy something more useful or steal the money outright?
This happened to me. I woke up this morning to find roughly $150 in charges had been made by someone in China (I found out when the e-mails came). My account password hadn’t been changed, so I went into iTunes and changed it and removed my credit card information.
I’m not sure how the hacker got my information; I run updated, redundant anti-virus and spyware software on my PC. My iPhone is jailbroken which is the most likely culprit, though I’ve been careful about what I install. A little surprising is that rather than the Japanese account that I used 3 days ago the account that was used was the American account that I haven’t used for a few weeks.
I don’t blame Apple (unless the breach was on their end, of course), but it would have been nice if the strange account behavior (I’ve bought about 4 paid apps in the past 8 months and the thief grabbed 50 or so in 12 hours). Anyway, I submitted a support claim to Apple (though I don’t expect anything to come from that) and will dispute the charges through my credit card company once they go through.
At least for my debit card, I’d still be able to recover all funds. In the summer of 2008, I found that someone had cloned my debit card and spent over $2K one night. I told my bank and they said that all I had to do was detail the fraudulent transactions listed on my account, sign it, and fax it to their headquarters, which I did from a local branch. One week later, every dime was returned to my account and they even re-figured an interest statement to include the stolen funds.
The most inconvenient aspect was being without my debit card for a couple of weeks while they replaced mine with a new one.
Okay, I removed my credit card info from my account. I was thinking of buying an itunes gift card for $10 to $15 and using that for my account since I rarely ever purchase anything but this way I’d have a way to pay for it. Will that be safe? Do gift cards expire?
My iTunes account was hacked three months ago. AmEx called because I’m not in the habit of purchasing all sorts of Avatar-based crap, so it was flagged as unusual activity. The credit card was cancelled, iTunes was informed, and I quickly changed my iTunes password. I didn’t bother changing the credit card info as I was in a hurry.
Two weeks ago, I got an email receipt from iTunes. The jackass thief had downloaded more stuff, which meant he’d figured out the new password, and that iTunes had allowed charges on a cancelled credit card.
In your Account screen, once you choose “Edit Payment Information,” you get a set of icons of types of cards (Visa, MC, etc). At the end is a radio button for “None.” It’s somewhat easy to miss; I did at first.
If you had a 15 character password with random mixed case numbers letters and symbols that was never used anywhere else—then they probably aren’t cracking it by brute-force. That would be troubling. It would mean they are getting it through some other weakness in the security model :(.
The first one was a crap password (although not so bad as to make it on that list, mind you), and was definitely my fault. The second one was 12 characters which included mixed case letters and numbers, but no symbols. I’ve never used it anywhere else. It’s possible, I guess, to crack it via brute force, but seems unlikely.
I also find it troubling that their system allowed the thief to download a whole bunch of stuff using a cancelled credit card.