In my home state of Massachusetts, a fight is brewing between Apple and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, after the latter had her stolen credit card fraudulently drained using iTunes, and Cupertino barely lifted a finger to help her.
Threatpost reports that after having her credit card info stolen during a trip to New Hampshire, the thieves first tried to buy a laptop from Dell using the card number.
Since the transaction looked odd to Dell, they reached out to Coakley about it, and she was able to put a stop to the purchase before it was billed.
Guess what happened when the same thieves tried to spend a buttload of money on iTunes, though? That’s right, they were able to empty Coakley’s account… and Apple seemingly didn’t even care.
Coakley’s hopping mad about it, and she’s now looking for answers from Cupertino. We’ve got to say, she’s got a point: iTunes credit card fraud is a common occurrence, and more often than not, one that Apple doesn’t do enough to address. Let’s hope this bumps them back onto the right track.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
20 responses to “Massachusetts Attorney General Wants Answers From Apple About iTunes Credit Card Fraud”
Wait, Coakley thinks Apple should know that a card has been stolen, even if the bank tells them it’s legit?  The only “responsibility” any vendor has is to run  the number through the bank’s screening process.  If the bank says the number is good, they make the sale.  What else does she expect them to do?  Apple wouldn’t even let me download a free track after my old card expired.
If she had actually reported it stolen there’s no way her “account was emptied.” Â All the responsibility belongs to the bank after that.
It’s becoming obvious why she was able to lose one of the safest Sen-D elections in the history of politics.
If the transaction with the Dell Laptop was fraudulent why didn’t she cancel the CC number in order to prevent other charges?
Abuse of office for her own vendettas.
How is it possible that such idiots can be elected into office?
Do people like this blame Macy’s when their stolen credit card is used there? OMG people.
The details aren’t all there, but the real problem is that there has been loads of issues with iTunes account hacks. Â Somehow, somebody gets access to my iTunes account and uses ALL my credit buying weird Chinese apps. Â That’s happened once to me but happened to lots of other people. Â I think the real issue is iTunes’ account security, not a stolen credit card.
Somehow someone began using my iTunes acct to start gifting expensive games and apps. Luckily I had the PageOne app that gives me notices of cc activity. Apple has no system to call them about fraud. You need to email and wait a day or two for response. I couldn’t even find anywhere on their website on steps to take for fraud. I changed my password to start. I later changed to ‘none’ for payment option; something I didn’t realize you could do with iTunes. I also called AMEX to report the fraud. I later find out that AMEX closed the account but neglected to note that I reported fraud on that account. There must be some sort of financial gain to act so stupid with fraud issues.
My spending with iTunes has been cut to practically none. The hassle of temp setting up the cc with iTunes has cut out all the nonsense impulse purchase.
Coattails. Â This is the Democrat who actually lost the special election for Ted Kennedy’s seat. Â There will be an entire generation of PhDs whose theses will be about how she managed to do it.
Typical liberal, always blaming someone else for their problems. Listen Coakley, take some responsibility here and stop acting like the crazy, lefty you are.
Exactly. Somehow the thief also got hold of her CC address to make a new account.