Internet

iTunes Account Hacked

A few weeks ago I was at my inlaws, enjoying a good game of football on tv when some commercial came on for a contest. My wife asked me to enter so I took out my laptop. In pops an email; it was an iTunes receipt for a bunch of iPhone & iPad apps that I hadn’t bought. I made sure that it wasn’t a phishing email, and pulled out my iPhone to see that my account credit in iTunes was nearly depleted. We headed back home where a second iTunes receipt waited for me.

I scoured the Apple website for some kind of iTunes contact number, but the only thing I could find was a number for general Apple support. They informed me that they didn’t support iTunes and pointed me to a web form as the sole possible support. I filled out the form stating that my account had been hacked and my credits had been used. I asked if they could reinstate my credits bug I was sure that they weren’t going to do that.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email the next day stating that they would reinstate my credits but it would take a few days. They also locked my account and forced me to change my password (which I already had done the night before). They stated that they normally do not reissue credits and that this would be the only time that they would do this for me. I also had them de-authorize all the computers on file as the numbers didn’t jive.

I asked if they could identify how I was hacked but received just a canned response that I would require a subpoena? I highly suspect that my account was compromised via a shady app. I scanned for viruses, trojans and keyloggers and everything came up clean. The original password that I used was unique to iTunes and was pretty secure.

iTunes support had claimed that it would take 4-5 days to get my credits back, but the credits were back into my account the following day. I have to admit that even though I couldn’t get an answer as to how I was hacked, the support for iTunes for this incident was top notch. The person I dealt with was courteous, friendly yet professional and the speed at which everything was dealt with was very quick.

I’ve learned a few lessons in all this:

#1) I’m glad I didn’t have a credit card or paypal tied to my iTunes account. I could have been robbed blind. Granted I could have disputed the charges with my credit card company, but that would have been a whole other headache.

#2) In the future, when getting/buying iTunes cards, I won’t enter the codes in right away. I’ll keep them unused until my credit runs low and just enter them as I need them.

#3) Not all customer support are incompetent and just read off a script or use canned responses. I received the kind of customer support one would only expect from a small mom & pop type operation, not a big company like Apple.

Luc "Sandman" G. November 2, 2010