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This is still happening. I had an iTunes account I hadn’t used since early 2008. At that time, I purchased a couple of albums using Paypal as my form of payment. I use Paypal because it is supposed to limit your financial exposure to all these other internet businesses. But apparently, if you use Paypal on iTunes, it sets up some kind of ongoing subscription that allows iTunes to charge your Paypal account and you don’t have to sign in to Paypal to authorize it. Not only that, it sets a spending limit of $5,000 a month!

I found this out when I started receiving emails on the 18th from iTunes and Paypal thanking me for my purchases. Between 8/16 and 8/18, there were 17 fraudulent charges to my Paypal account from iTunes, totaling nearly $700. I know my computer is not infected with a keylogger or anything else. I hadn’t signed into that iTunes account in over two years–would a thief wait that long to use his ill-gotten gains? I religiously scan my computer for virus and malware.

There’s a group on Facebook with several other people who are having the same problem right now, so Apple/iTunes have done nothing to secure their website yet. I see several people in different places say it’s because “you had an easy password,” “it’s because you are using Windows,” “your computer is compromised,” etc. It’s my belief that iTunes has been compromised, not us! My password was strong, consisting of a combination of 10 letters and numbers. It was not a dictionary word. As I said previously, I had not even signed into that account in over two years.

Paypal says I will get my money back, but it hasn’t happened yet. They are still waiting for a response from iTunes.

Another thing that irks me about this, all but one of the 17 charges are less than $50. I read here on AppleInsider that iTunes invoices the account when you get close to $50 to limit their liability and because purchases less than $50 are not protected by law. The law regarding purchases less than $50 is here, on FTC.gov. If Apple/iTunes wants to help put an end to junk like this, they should only invoice one purchase, regardless of how large it is. Scams like this might be shut down much quicker if that were the case. I’ve never experienced any other online merchant who does this, so why is Apple/iTunes doing it?