iTunes Fraud Leaves Man Singing Sad Tune
Web surfers who link their debit or credit card to iTunes have reason to be cautious after a British man found his bank account plunged into the red overnight following £1,000 (about $1,580) in fraudulent iTunes gift purchases.
Register reader Peter woke up one morning last week to discover an e-mail informing him of that he’d purchased a "£10 Monthly Gift for wqfaqapk445@hotmail.com," an account he'd never heard of.
Suspicious, Peter checked his iTunes purchase history, and found that on Jan. 19, a hacker had hijacked his iTunes account and ordered dozens of these fraudulent gifts.
As a result, his bank balance linked to the account went from £700 (about $1,105) to £300 in the red (about -$473). He had to borrow money from friends to pay bills until the online fraud was resolved, the Register reported.
Luckily, Peter’s bank refunded the stolen funds, and iTunes suspended his account the day after he reported the fraud.
Although is not known how the attacker carried out the scam, the Register said the cybercrime is similar to an August 2010 incident in which iTunes users whose accounts were linked to PayPal suffered a similar fate.
Music fans who wish to avoid such mishaps will want to add money to iTunes using prepaid cards or fixed charge amounts, rather than having the music service draw automatically from other accounts.
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