Beware of This New Credit Card Scam Making the Rounds Right Now

It’s a new week, which means there’s a new scam making the rounds — and this new clever little tactic is hitting your credit card and debit cards, hoping you don’t notice a familiar purchase on your statement, then continuing to run up your balance over time.

For now, let’s just call it the iTunes scam.

Here’s how it works: Fraudsters are disguising fraudulent purchases made with your credit card as iTunes purchases. Being that iTunes offers more than 40 million songs, 25,000 TV shows, 65,000 movies, and has more than 800 million credit cards linked to 800 million accounts, these scammers are banking on the people they hack making regular purchases on iTunes. They’ll start small, perhaps with a charge that’s only a few dollars, expecting the amount to be so miniscule that you won’t even give it a second glance. If the charge isn’t reported as fraudulent, they’ll keep making purchases, gradually increasing the amount that they spend. These scammers will try to ride this as long as they can.

But what really makes this scam hard to detect is how the charge is reported on your credit card statement. Usually, it’s reported as something like “APL*ITUNES.CON.” It can be easy for consumers to overlook, especially if the charge is just a few dollars and they can easily point to the Ariana Grande song they downloaded that month as the reason for the charge.

The scam is the latest to involve Apple and iTunes, especially after the iTunes gift card scams made their rounds a few years ago. As you may recall, in those situations, scammers posed as a person of authority (i.e., CEOs, priests, etc.) and sent e-mails to employees, constituents, parish members, etc., asking them to purchase iTunes gift cards. If the individual being scammed went through with the purchase, the scammer would direct them to inform them of the gift card code in ensuing correspondence, then use the gift card for their own purchase.

This new scam works a bit differently, and all Americans should be aware of it. Here’s a look at what you can do to keep your credit and debit cards safe, as well as ensure you can report any suspicious Apple iTunes activity promptly:

  • Look for the follow-up e-mail: Whether it’s a recurring purchase you make through Apple iTunes or a one-time buy, you should receive a post-purchase e-mail receipt. If there’s a charge that you don’t recognize on your credit or debit card statement from iTunes, find the receipt in your e-mail to either verify the purchase or take the steps to dispute it.
  • Go to your purchase history: Can’t find the receipt in your e-mail? No problem, just go to your Apple purchase history, which is linked to your Apple ID account, to locate it.
  • Check your statements: With banking having become so mobile and digitized in recent years, it can be easy to just ignore checking your online or paper statements on a regular frequency. And that’s what the scammers in this situation are hoping for. So do yourself a favor and go and check your statement right now — you could just end up foiling a scam against you.
  • Report it: Call your bank or credit card company right after you notice something is awry to report the issue. They’ll likely report the charge as fraud, start an investigation into the fraud and then reimburse you upon conclusion of it. They’ll also cancel your current card and reissue you a new one.
  • Change your Apple ID password, credit card: If you’ve been scammed, then you’ll want to immediately change your Apple ID password and the credit card you have on file. Even if you haven’t been scammed, it might not be a bad idea to assess the strength of your current password to make sure it’s a good one that cannot be easily guessed.

Unfortunately when it comes to scammers, we’re more reactive than we are proactive because we never know what tactics cyber thieves are coming up with next. While there are certain things you can do to safeguard your online accounts, it also pays — perhaps literally — to know the current scams and what to look for with them.

Regards,

Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority


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