My iTunes Account Hacked

Several weeks ago I got a receipt from iTunes in my e-mail. I knew that I hadn't made any recent purchases from Apple and so I looked more closely at the transaction. The receipt said that I purchased a $40 gift card for another user. I looked at the e-mail headers to make sure the e-mail really did come from Apple and that it wasn't some kind of hoax. Sure enough, it was legitimate and I knew my iTunes account had been hacked.

The first order of business was to log in and change my password. I was too late. The hackers had already done that and I couldn't even log into my account. The only thing to do was to get a hold of Apple and request their help. If you go to the Apple website and click on the support tab (upper right corner), there are a list of products. As the hack took place on iTunes, I clicked on the iTunes button and it took me to http://www.apple.com/support/itunes. I spent some time going through the various links only to discover they contained information on how to do things, not talk to a real person. There was a section at the bottom of the regarding the "Apple ID Support" with a link that said, "Start here." I gave it a click and there was a link on the next page that said "Contact Support." I clicked it and went to a page with yet another link. By this time, I figured they really were trying to keep people from contacting them by obfuscating how to really get a hold of them.

I kept clicking away and eventually got to https://expresslane.apple.com/Symptoms.do. The page asked for an issue description along with some other questions, which I filled out. I then had the option of signing into my iTunes account. Since my password was changed to something I didn't know, I clicked the "Continue" button. Underneath it had some text that said, "Without signing in." I was presented with 3 options (your mileage may vary depending on time of day): Phone, Chat, or E-mail. I was in a hurry and so I chose the phone option. It gave me a number to call, which I did. I was asked for some information and was immediately put on hold. Furthermore, I was told it would be about 20 minutes before they got to my issue. Not wanting to wait on the phone that long, I hung up. About 10 minutes later I got a call back from Apple and they were able to help me resolve the issue.

None of the money in my account was used to purchase the bogus gift card and so there was no need to re-credit my account. I was able to change my password and security questions. While I never did have any credit card numbers associated with my iTunes account, had there been, I would have made sure to remove them. While you may feel you can trust online merchants to store your credit card information, I reserve the right not to. After this, I will be very careful whom I let store those numbers.