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Hacked...Help!

T

Tarab8

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 14, 2016
4
0
I'm not sure if anyone can provide me with any insight, but in a place where it is definitely worth a shot.

I woke up this morning to find multiple emails from apple. One stated my shipping/billing address and credit card have been changed. Another said my apple id password had been changed. The next said my rescue email address had been changed. The last said my apple id email address had been changed. As soon as apple support opened, I called. They were unsure of what to do as my apple id was no longer a valid apple id as my apple id had been changed. They forwarded me to a senior support person. He found that they also changed my security questions. There was no way for them to verify my identity. He sent me a text with a unique code which I was able to read back to him, but while that verified my sms, it didn't verify that I was the owner of all of my apple devices. I was on the phone with apple for 2 hours. He disabled the apple id and eventually he told me that he escalated my case to the engineering department and hopefully they would be able to restore my original info. However, I got a call later saying that because the rescue email was changed and there is no way for them to verify my identity as the owner of the devices and apple id, they couldn't do anything for me.
The rep said that if I can provide receipts showing seriel numbers for all of my devices, they can delete the current apple id and then I can set up a new id. Unfortunately, I don't have receipts. I'm sure I can get a copy of the receipt for my phone-purchased through verizon, but the other devices are 3 and 5 years old. I threw out the receipts at least a year ago.

So as of right now, I'm no longer able to access anything on the devices that requires an apple id...no ios updates, no app updates, no app purchases, no changes whatsoever. Apple is telling me that I'm SOL.

Maybe this is naive, but I had never heard of the two step verification process before today and I really thougtht that my info was safe with Apple. I feel like my house was robbed, my locks were changed and the police are telling me that there's nothing that can be done.

Lesson learned, but now I have two Ipads that my kids and my husband and I use quite frequently that will quickly become obsolete. I absolutely cannot afford to replace the devices at this time.

What would you do? Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Two-step verification would have avoided this, but basically someone got your login and password through some kind of social engineering.

I don't see what this gets them though, except malicious disruption. They don't physically have any of your devices.
 
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Is the "Find my iPhone/iPad" option turned on for your devices? If so, nothing could be done.
 
M. Gustave said:
Two-step verification would have avoided this, but basically someone got your login and password through some kind of social engineering.

I don't see what this gets them though, except malicious disruption. They don't physically have any of your devices.
Click to expand...

The new "owner" has access to all previously purchased apps, music, books, etc.
 
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M. Gustave said:
Two-step verification would have avoided this, but basically someone got your login and password through some kind of social engineering.

I don't see what this gets them though, except malicious disruption. They don't physically have any of your devices.
Click to expand...

The apple id rep told me that sometimes apple ids are stolen and used to activate other phones. Those phones are then sold in other countries. I have no idea if this is true.
[doublepost=1471229879][/doublepost]
silverblack said:
The new "owner" has access to all previously purchased apps, music, books, etc.
Click to expand...
And all of the info stored in my cloud.
 
silverblack said:
If I were you, I would be more worried about all my other online accounts (banks, credit cards). I'd be busy changing passwords of my accounts. The iPads and iPhones are the least of the problem.
Click to expand...
Already done. I did that immediately before contacting apple.
 
Such massive compromise on your account must be done in some sort of sophisticated methods. Maybe you should change your email account password into a stronger one and remember to change password once being logged into other places.
Hmm. What I am curious about your issue more is who could get so much information about your old Apple ID.
 
Your old account is gone. The iPhone can still be restored. Get prove of purchase from Verizon and take it to Apple Store. They can turn off find my iPhone and then you can reset your iPhone with new account ID.
 
Last edited:
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I'd been holding off on turning on two-factor for a while now because it's a pain, but this post pushed me over the edge, especially since I got an alert recently that the email address I use for my apple ID showed up on a black market site.
 
Hi,

Interesting, I had the exact same thing happen this Sunday. It must have been more than an isolated incident. After going back and forth with Apple, here is my story and the part that no one can seem to figure out.

I had a very strange experience. I've heard of Apple ID's getting hacked, but I haven't come across a situation where the person does not get a notification that someone has logged in through an unrecognized device.

Right at 11:00 when Apple Care closed I got string of notifications (credit card / billing address changed, followed by password changed, followed by recovery email changed, followed by Apple ID changed). then my Apple ID was gone.

I've read that this has happened to people before, but the one thing that no one can explain (including Apple) is how I never received a notification that someone had logged in through a new device.

I had my deleted emails restored just to see if they somehow managed to get in and delete it (I would have noticed the pop-up on my mobile device regardless, but just in case). Even after restoring (directly from gmail servers) there was still nothing.

I have never gotten rid of a device without wiping it - in fact, I've kept virtually all of my old Apple devices. I also don't have any jail-broken devices.

I was sitting next to my wife with all of our other devices when it got hacked. There is really no explanation as to how they managed to hack the Apple ID without a new device log-in notification.

Is it possible that someone actually hacked into one of my devices and / or cloned my device ID? Interested in any thoughts. Apple can't seem to explain it either. In fact, I'm still going back and forth to try and get my Apple ID restored even though I have multiple devices at home and family accounts linked to it. It was an old account so it pre-dated 2 step verification and email verification (i.e. my apple id email worked for notifications but was never verified by apple), but still can't explain how there was no new device log-in notification, which I have gotten before when logging into new devices.

Very disconcerting. Has anyone ever heard of this happening?
 
Well time to turn 2 step verification on for me. I dislike this only because I always have difficulty especially when I change phones and numbers.
 
Loco Emperor said:
Well time to turn 2 step verification on for me. I dislike this only because I always have difficulty especially when I change phones and numbers.
Click to expand...

Actually when changing phones (if staying with iPhone) all there really is to it is when you sign in to your Apple ID it will send a notification to your other signed in devices asking for a six digits code for authentication
 
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