Gadget Girl Tips

I was buying a new gift card today for my iTunes account and remembered why I started loading the pre-paid cards onto my account. A few years back I was checking my bank account online and notice that there were three charges of $100 each to my debit card from iTunes. At that time, I thought it was strange since I had been using Amazon for downloading my music. I quickly grabbed my cell phone and called the bank while at the same time logging into iTunes and changed my password. The bank disputed the charges and restored the charged amounts to my account. Apple locked the account from any future purchases while I merged to a new Apple account.

Luckily I caught the mistake before more damage was done to my checking account.

Since then I load iTunes pre-paid gift cards to my account without linking a credit card. This way if someone hacks into my account I am only out the amount of the gift card and I don’t have to mess with restoring my credit with the banks. (Under my Apple ID, I have "none" selected as the payment option.)

The iconic thing about this whole thing is that all the songs the hacker purchased can be found under the purchased tab on my old account.

Let’s Break it Down Barney Style: What do to if you are hacked.

- Call the bank/credit card company to report the theft
- Change your password immediately. The password should have 1 capital letter, 1 lowercase letter, and at least one number. To make a more difficult password, consider using a pattern on your keyboard. For example you could use the pattern !@34QWer on your keyboard.