Hacked?

[edtorious]

Not sure if it's my iPhone, my iMac or my iTunes? Today this morning I got an email from Apple informing me of Account Info Change saying that my shipping and/or billing address and credit card was changed, I don’t remember doing this so I immediately went to login to my Apple ID management account in Apple's website and found out that somebody changed the city, state, zip code and credit card info! Its strange that my street address remained the same and the credit card they change it to is not mine. And so I changed my password and corrected the city and state address but I left the incorrect credit card info as evidence. So I'm thinking I'm ok now.

And then later today I got 2 emails again from iTunes Store which is basically my so called iTunes receipts. Each email contains a description of the purchase suspiciously shows items as GIFT CERTIFICATES FOR DAEVIR on one email and on the other email as GIFT CERTIFICATES FOR KENVIN and each was charged $50.00.

And so I reported this to Apple thru Express Lane for iTunes support, they don't have any phone number for iTunes support, I have to file my report online. And so I did that and got an email response shortly and this is what they said.

"Hi Ed,

RJ here from iTunes Customer Support. How are you doing today? I hope the day is treating you well.

I understand that your account has been compromised. I can only imagine how frustrating this is. Rest assured that I will do my best to turn things around for you.

It appears that your account information was modified without your authorization. This can happen for a number of reasons, most commonly due to "phishing" emails, sharing passwords, or using the same password for multiple online accounts.
Please review the following article for help in identifying legitimate emails from the iTunes Store.

Identifying legitimate emails from the iTunes Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2075

When you reset your password using http://iforgot.apple.com I highly recommend that you follow the suggestions outlined in the following article:

iTunes Store: Best practices for protecting the security of your account
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4156

I have also disabled the account of the purchaser of the gift certificates to prevent the same incident from happening again.

I hope I provided you with the assistance you need. If there's still anything else I can help you with, please do not hesitate to let me know. I'm just email away. I'll always be happy to help you.

Have a great day, Ed.

Sincerely,


RJ
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please Note: I work Friday-Tuesday, 8AM-5PM CST

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email with regards to the customer service you have received from yours truly. Any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated."

This is where my problem starts to get worst. The response looks ok, I'm a pretty knowledgable guy when it comes to computer even though I'm no expert so I take very good care and precautions when it comes to security of my accounts and passwords. But then as soon as I read his line saying the RJ disabled the ACCOUNT OF THE PURCHASER!. I was like OH NO! are they idiot! Didn't they realize that the hackers used MY ACCOUNT to purchase their gift certificates?!? And then lo and behold! My iTunes account is now DISABLED! I never wanted them to disable my account! I'm merely reporting the illegal activities on my account and hopefully they can explain to me what happened?

I'm now trying to get them to enable my account again, wish me luck. Its just so frustrating that sometimes these people are not thinking, that is why they are being taken advantage of these hackers. Hopefully this doesn't happen to you guys. My only consolation is my credit card was never used for this but I still feel sorry for whoever owns the credit card they used to make their illegal purchase.

 

[steve knight]

Hey you should have changed the shipping address and password and ordered a computer (G)

 

[ogremoustro]

Hey you should have changed the shipping address and password and ordered a computer (G)

That is really messed up man. Never do that ^^.

 

[munkery]

The most important parts of the response letter:

This can happen for a number of reasons, most commonly due to "phishing" emails, sharing passwords, or using the same password for multiple online accounts.

Secure passwords should contain at least 8 characters with at least one character from lower case alphabet, upper case alphabet, numbers, and symbols.

See the "Mac Security Suggestions" link in my sig for more security tips.

 

[Tech Elementz]

You can't blame them for disabling the account. After an attack like this, a safety precaution like this should be taken, just in case the hacker attempts to get in again. That reminds me, what kind of password do you have for your Apple ID? (have you been using a easy one, or a very hard one to guess?) What Antivirus have you been using? And lastly, what Internet browser are you using?

 

[edtorious]

Yes, I use a very secure password and I use Safari browser, I have a very good antivirus installed also. I mean sure disable my account but at least provide an option where I can still access my account in some way, not the way they do it where it's like they cut off my one and only access to some of my everyday needs of my Apple computing when it comes to iTunes, MobileMe, iPhone and etc... So you can imagine my frustration. i still haven't heard back from them but tomorrow hopefully they will enable my Apple ID back.

 

[macingman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Not sure if it's my iPhone, my iMac or my iTunes? Today this morning I got an email from Apple informing me of Account Info Change saying that my shipping and/or billing address and credit card was changed, I don’t remember doing this so I immediately went to login to my Apple ID management account in Apple's website and found out that somebody changed the city, state, zip code and credit card info! Its strange that my street address remained the same and the credit card they change it to is not mine. And so I changed my password and corrected the city and state address but I left the incorrect credit card info as evidence. So I'm thinking I'm ok now.

And then later today I got 2 emails again from iTunes Store which is basically my so called iTunes receipts. Each email contains a description of the purchase suspiciously shows items as GIFT CERTIFICATES FOR DAEVIR on one email and on the other email as GIFT CERTIFICATES FOR KENVIN and each was charged $50.00.

And so I reported this to Apple thru Express Lane for iTunes support, they don't have any phone number for iTunes support, I have to file my report online. And so I did that and got an email response shortly and this is what they said.

"Hi Ed,

RJ here from iTunes Customer Support. How are you doing today? I hope the day is treating you well.

I understand that your account has been compromised. I can only imagine how frustrating this is. Rest assured that I will do my best to turn things around for you.

It appears that your account information was modified without your authorization. This can happen for a number of reasons, most commonly due to "phishing" emails, sharing passwords, or using the same password for multiple online accounts.
Please review the following article for help in identifying legitimate emails from the iTunes Store.

Identifying legitimate emails from the iTunes Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2075

When you reset your password using http://iforgot.apple.com I highly recommend that you follow the suggestions outlined in the following article:

iTunes Store: Best practices for protecting the security of your account
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4156

I have also disabled the account of the purchaser of the gift certificates to prevent the same incident from happening again.

I hope I provided you with the assistance you need. If there's still anything else I can help you with, please do not hesitate to let me know. I'm just email away. I'll always be happy to help you.

Have a great day, Ed.

Sincerely,


RJ
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please Note: I work Friday-Tuesday, 8AM-5PM CST

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email with regards to the customer service you have received from yours truly. Any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated."

This is where my problem starts to get worst. The response looks ok, I'm a pretty knowledgable guy when it comes to computer even though I'm no expert so I take very good care and precautions when it comes to security of my accounts and passwords. But then as soon as I read his line saying the RJ disabled the ACCOUNT OF THE PURCHASER!. I was like OH NO! are they idiot! Didn't they realize that the hackers used MY ACCOUNT to purchase their gift certificates?!? And then lo and behold! My iTunes account is now DISABLED! I never wanted them to disable my account! I'm merely reporting the illegal activities on my account and hopefully they can explain to me what happened?

I'm now trying to get them to enable my account again, wish me luck. Its just so frustrating that sometimes these people are not thinking, that is why they are being taken advantage of these hackers. Hopefully this doesn't happen to you guys. My only consolation is my credit card was never used for this but I still feel sorry for whoever owns the credit card they used to make their illegal purchase.

If you resolve the issues with them once it is sorted out they willl reenable your account it sounds like the original email you got was a phishing email and you feel for it.

 

[edtorious]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)



If you resolve the issues with them once it is sorted out they willl reenable your account it sounds like the original email you got was a phishing email and you feel for it.

Yea hopefully they will re-enable. The original email I got even though it is a phishing email, I never click any of the link on that email, when I went to check my account, I went directly to Apple's site.

After further research though I don't know if this got anything to do with what happened to me, I have this app called MyCarSalon and I did an in app purchase thru it a few days ago. That was the last purchase I did a few days ago before this happened to me today. I've read some news about how some apps are obtaining your info illegally and I hope this is not what happened to me but as a precaution I've deleted the app.

 

[munkery]

Do you use PayPal in conjunction with your iTunes account?

 

[macingman]

Yea hopefully they will re-enable. The original email I got even though it is a phishing email, I never click any of the link on that email, when I went to check my account, I went directly to Apple's site.

After further research though I don't know if this got anything to do with what happened to me, I have this app called MyCarSalon and I did an in app purchase thru it a few days ago. That was the last purchase I did a few days ago before this happened to me today. I've read some news about how some apps are obtaining your info illegally and I hope this is not what happened to me but as a precaution I've deleted the app.

Your account will be reenabled when the issues are resolved. They can't just leave you with no account and make you lose all your purchases.

I would also recommend you change your email address password as it is possible the hackers gained access to your account by using the lost password feature and hacking your email to reset the password. That's how a lot of accounts across many sites are hacked as it's easier to hack an email rather than an Apple ID.

 

[alfmil]

...And so I changed my password and corrected the city and state address but I left the incorrect credit card info as evidence...

Had you changed the password and deleted/corrected all the information on your account, there probably would not have been any erroneous charges and you would not be in this predicament.

 

[macingman]

Had you changed the password and deleted/corrected all the information on your account, there probably would not have been any erroneous charges and you would not be in this predicament.

How can that be? Changing the password should of decreased the likelyhood of the situation. Also the story doesn't make sense I just realised, if the OP made a fake credit card how were they scammed? If it was a fake card it would of been impossible to get any money out of the account.

 

[Stealthipad]

How can that be? Changing the password should of decreased the likelyhood of the situation. Also the story doesn't make sense I just realised, if the OP made a fake credit card how were they scammed? If it was a fake card it would of been impossible to get any money out of the account.

I would suggest the the scammer made these purchases BEFORE the owner of the account changed the information!

It is common practice to close a compromised account.

Just remember that it was not Apple that gave out his log on info, it was the owner of the account!

 

[atoates]

I have just seen on my bank statement that I have been charged £70 over the space of 3 days, but my billing history in iTunes shows nothing. Has anyone else had anything like this??

 

[sulpfiction]

I feel bad for all the aggrevation this has caused you! But I can't help but think that it all sounds really fishy to me...Right down to the email from iTunes support.

 

[edtorious]

I have just seen on my bank statement that I have been charged £70 over the space of 3 days, but my billing history in iTunes shows nothing. Has anyone else had anything like this??

What does the charges say?

Finally they were able to re-enable my iTunes account but no explanation as to how my account was compromised. Perhaps I may never know.

 

[labman]

I would call Apple and push for a explanation since your bank account is connected to it.


do you use a independent passwords for your financial related accounts. All my Banking, Paypal Ebay, Itunes,loans, Utility's anything I pay or receive money has it's own independent password. Many people use one password or a couple. So all it takes is one dishonest person with access to your password. now I will admit that some forums or or non financial might share a password but even there I have a few different ones.