Bob, the only thing that prevents from doing the same is the fact that I fear that as soon as I recreate my account using my credentials and a new credit card, before I can put “none” as a payment method, Apple will charge the new CC for the unpaid songs that the hacker has downloaded but not paid (because I have immediately blocked the previous card)…
Anyway I have written to a consumer association and to an italian TV show that often deals with such PITAs…
If they call me I don’t think that Apple would eventually make a good impression on the public opinion

Similar things here. Charges started appearing on my online bank statement; when I tried to access my iTunes account, my password had been changed. When I tried to reset my password, I was told that the iTunes account could not be found. Contacted Apple, and “Buddy” advised me to contact my bank etc. (duh), and that I should change my iTunes password. I told him that he should actually read my original email so he could learn that I no longer had access to my account.

Just out of curiosity, I went into iTunes and tried to recreate my account using the same ID as the old, compromised ID – and I was able too. So apparently the hackers accessed my account, grabbed my card number, created a new account with the card number and then deleted my old account.

In my new account, I’ve removed credit card information; I’ll add it in with each transaction – a pain, but maybe that’ll keep this from happening again.

And, like everyone else, the lesson I learned is that Apple is useless when you have a problem with their security.

Thanks everyone for your comments. Same thing happened to me (except I never got the chinese comments!). But I cannot access my account, iTunes unreceptive, I canceled my card with the bank, etc. So frustrating. iTunes is a real let down. Back to buying CDs and uploading them to a computer and then downloading to the iPod. Or, the prepaid $10 card from the grocery store.

I have received a kind but useless formal response from Apple:

“Hi Mario,
Hello and thank you for being patient. My name is ******, I’m a Senior Advisor here at the iTunes Store and your case has been escalated to me to ensure that it is handled correctly. I understand that your account information has change to Chinese. I do want to apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. I definitely understand how this can be an inconvenience.
I can definitely cancel your account but, first the unpaid order will have to be paid. What you will need to do is add your credit card to your account and paid the unpaid for $39.95. Once the order is paid I can issue you a refund for the order. You can not change your account information until this order is paid.
I also recommend that you contact your financial institution as soon as possible to inquire about canceling the card or account and removing the unauthorized transactions. You should also ask them to launch an investigation into the security of your account. Your bank should then issue a chargeback for the purchases in order for you to be reimbursed for the charges. The iTunes Store cannot reverse the charges.
In the meantime, I strongly recommend you change your account password immediately. Changing the password will help to prevent anyone else from using your iTunes Store account to place orders without your knowledge. To increase the security of your account, choose a password that has at least eight digits and includes both letters and numbers. You can change your password using this website:
etc. etc.”

to which I have responded:

Thank you for your response.
First of all my account information has not changed to Chinese because of my will, it has been HACKED.
Consequently I cannot access my account anymore because the scum that has hacked it has obviously changed ANY information and password.
As I told in my first message I suffered no financial damage because I could immediately block my credit card while the hacker had just began to buy fraudulently using my hacked account.
Surprise for him!
Reassuming: I have already blocked my card, I have already informed the authorities, filed an IC3 complaint (Complaint Id: I1003152016455832) but I CANNOT access my account in any way. I can survive without it but I would prefer to close it, obviously, instead of letting some Chinese guy to use my credentials.
Besides that I am not prone to pay any amount of money for a security breach of your system, a breach that I have learned is well known (reported in many newsgroup on the Internet, as I have verified after what has occurred to me).
And even in the remote possibility I would accept to pay for a fault that is not mine I could not, because I cannot add any credit card detail to an unreachable account…

I am wondering how long they will deny the truth…

I saw a news article whiloe i was researching this. The Japanese have started an inquiry into this. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hamiG-B6J4M-UaUfmO0qxGjcLwqA

I have had the same thing happen. All dated the 12th & 13th of March.
I have contacted my bank and they have launched an investigation.
Apple is no help and my itunes account is blocked until I pay an invoice.
I think Apple are not doing anything about the issue as at the end of the day they are still getting paid. It is the banks that have to pay.

man. same problem with me.. kinda. someone is buying music off my account so i changed my password and they still managed to buy more music. how gay. ima have to contact my credit card company now

Same thing happened here.
Today I have received four SMS form my credit card company telling that someone was trying to buy music for about 250 USD.
But luckily CartaSi (VISA) has a policy that protects from unauthorized expenses: if you suspect a fraud and you call immediately, having the SMS service active, you will not be charged for anything.
But reaction time is essential…
I have read that some clues point to Boston: well, living in Italy I must say that I had been using the involved card number for paying a Boston cable TV network for my son…
And that last year I had to change another credit card number under a strong cloning suspicion. Same kind of payment in the Boston area.
Now I am going to have a rechargeable card to use for those payments.

Hi,

Same thing happened to me today – username and password suddenly didn’t exist… checked my account and loads of transactions were made of about the same amount.
Great, like I don’t already have enough stuff to deal with this week.

Clearly this a major security breach, and one which apple doesn’t really seem to have control of (or doesn’t care about?).

I like Apple products, but it sucks massively that they are pretending this isn’t happening. I will not be keeping any more cc details online with apple.

My Credit Card company called to verify ‘unusual’ transactions
yesterday from Itunes. 22 transactions of the same amount (about $56 each), all the same day. Tried to log into my Itunes account. Got a message that my username didn’t exist!! Could not log in. Apple basicly saying to have my CC company deal with it. Had to cancel my card. I have not recieved the usual invoice in my email. Apple did verify the charges were made, but that all the ifo they would provide. This is not good.

I’m yet another one. Was taken for $253 before I caught it. I’ll refrain from stating the details as you can just chalk mine up as a carbon copy of the other ones.

Apple is absolutely useless in assisting with this. They seem to be in the phase of denial like Toyota was before it all blew up. What sucks is we’re the lucky folks who got nailed before Apple was forced to deal with the situation. I can only hope that some of their executives get their accounts hacked so they can wake up to this B.S.

For now, I went to our local grocery store and bought a pre-paid credit card. That way I cap what can be stolen from me. There is obviously NOTHING being done by Apple (where the problem/security hole lies) and therefore NOTHING preventing this from happening again. Without the AppStore, the iPhone is just another phone. So this was my answer to taking care of a problem because Apple won’t.

it seems itunes is not doing a good job at all. my account got hacked too, and i was charged for $1357.35!!! my cc bill really scared me.
hacker even deleted my account. i had to recreate my account. i don know how that could even happen.

i have just been hit for £220+ have canceled my card, but noe is saying there is a problem with itunes and will not let me in. on top of that my itunes account has been changed to China, i am not in china I Live in England, i am at a loss anyone know how i can change my country back to u,k i just keep getting error messages about outstanding charges.

Got an email receipt from iTunes for $57 in purchases yesterday. Knew I hadn’t purchased so immediately called iTunes. They advised me to change my password and contact my credit card company. Called the cc company and they showed the charge pending but not yet posted to my card. (Guess I’m lucky to have caught it so early.) They said I’d have to call back when the charge leaves pending status to dispute and launch a fraud investigation. Meanwhile, I cancelled the credit card.

AFTER I reported to iTunes that my account was attacked, changed my password and cancelled my credit card, someone purchased another $19 through my iTunes account only the charge was declined by my cc company because I had cancelled the card. So now, my iTunes account is blocked and I can’t change the payment method to “None” because of the unpaid purchase.

I spent 1.5 hours on the phone last night with iTunes. The first associate said iTunes could do nothing because this was a problem with my credit card. I yelled at her and got connected to a supervisor. Initially the super asserted the same. Said someone stole my credit card number and set up their own iTunes account charging their music to my card. Uh, then how did I get the receipt in my email box? And why is the music showing in the purchase history on my account? And why haven’t they charged anything else to my credit card? “Oh,” she said, “You’re right. Someone got into your iTunes account.” After that, she was actually very nice and tried to be helpful. She advised me to change my password again, as well as my security question and (GET THIS) my birthdate! I asked, “Don’t you want to know my real birthday.” The answer , “No, it’s only used as part of your security credentials.” Never mind how I’m supposed to remember the fake birthdate.

At one point, she said I should not download any of the hijacked music (Like I listen to Ludacris anyway.) and in fact should not do anything in my iTunes account until my cc company completes their fraud investigation. (Who knows how long that will take?) In order to continue using iTunes, she suggested I set up ANOTHER iTunes account, using a different email address which I “could set up on gmail or hotmail.”

She said sometimes theives get your iTunes password by hijacking email, so suggested I change my email password. Then walked me through downloading malware scanner (www.malwarebytes.org) to check for other viruses. Then she called another iTunes support line on my behalf to ask them to deactivate all the devices associated with my account. The first person she got on the other line refused because they only support iPhone and iPod Touch (but I have a Nano). But like I said, this girl was really trying to help me so she called the other help line AGAIN and got a more helpful operator, who deactivated all my devices. Then my supervisor, who I’m in love with at this point because no telephone support person has ever gone this distance for me, helped me reactivate only my computer on the account.

At the end, she said, “You’ll still need to have your credit card company launch a fraud investigation to get the charges cleared from your account.” I’m like, “Ok, I can do that,” and I’m feeling pretty good.

Then this morning I get an email from somebody else in iTunes support saying I have to pay the $19 in charges which were declined after I cancelled my credit card! She wrote, “I know you didn’t make this purchase, but we can’t refund something that has no value and since this was never paid for it has no value.” I wrote back, “I don’t want a refund! Just remove that transaction from my account. You allowed it to go through AFTER I reported my account had been hacked and cancelled my credit card. It’s your responsibility.” She wrote back AGAIN saying, “I just want you to have the information you need so that you can deal with this situation. It’s required by your credit card company. You’ll need to pay for the $19 even though you didn’t purchase them.” !!! My friends, I am not kidding. I have it in black and white from iTunes support. I called my credit card company AGAIN today and they said no way, I do not have to pay the charge which was made after I cancelled my card, but iTunes has still blocked my account.

Here’s the bottom line: iTunes is exceedingly vulnerable to hacking but iTunes wants to do as little as humanly possible so they take no responsibility for it when a hack happens.

Ditto to all the above, 5 purchases, disabled my account from future purchases. Now what?

Wow, add me to the LONG list of people that have had charges for itune purchases charged to my credit card. I promptly emailed itunes and they told me to cancel my itunes account so I did and had to cancel my credit card/ATM card and get a new one issued. Now I would like to purchase an application for my iphone and can’t because my account says that I still owe $32????? I thought they had taken care of this, but obviously not. I thought I could open up a new account but it won’t let me because it says that that email address already has an account-ahhhh!!!

My iTunes account was hacked this morning for a total of $349.58 (8 separate receipts, each less than $50, made at approximately half hour intervals). I canceled the credit card and removed the card information from my iTunes account, changed my Apple ID, password, and security question, and de-authorized all machines associated with the account. My credit card company asked me to complete a fraud claim and will take the issue up with Apple.

I did manage to speak to an Apple representative who, GET THIS, suggested that I select ‘none’ as the payment option and make payments with iTunes gift cards rather than saving credit card or debit card information on the iTunes store.

I don’t think they ever got my charge card number (I didn’t change it and I’ve had no problems since). I think they got into my iTunes account (I did change my password).

If they had my CC number I think they’d have purchased more than $60 of music and videos (and the videos they can’t even play on their computer). I don’t even think they activated another computer to play the DRM / protected music.

I think they just got into my iTunes account somehow. (Or it’s an internal computer error at Apple’s end).

My iTunes account was just hacked too. I have not logged on to iTunes since March 09. I received a call from American Express saying there was a suspicious charge on my account from Apple.com, more specifically iTunes for $42. I told them I had not made any purchases from iTunes in quite a while and told them to block the charges. When I got home, I checked my email to see if someones was accessing my personal iTunes or was using my CC on a different iTunes account. I had 4 emails with about $50 each of crappy music from iTunes that I never purchased. I contacted Apple and like stated about they were absolutely not help and told my to contact AM EX and cancel my CC. I contacted AM EX again and told them I had almost $200 in iTunes charges on my account that I never made. They took off the original $42 and the other 3 amounts I was billed for. Thank goodness AM EX is a stand up company. They are sending me a new card via next day mail for FREE and have removed the charges. I still do not understand how I was hacked and why it was hacked. According to iTunes my account is only good on one computer but yet the person still downloaded well over 100 songs. Is there a way for this thief to play the stolen music?

My account was hacked two, three separate charges for about $120. Apple resolved to say they were not at fault and I was repsonsible for the charges. The worst part is that after I locked the card at my bank, there were still outstanding charges that I didn’t make. Now I can’t even remove the credit card number. The final straw was when they suggested I pay for the thief’s outstanding charges with an apple gift card.

Add me to the list, I’m from Maine!