Edible Apple

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said last week that her office will be taking a hard look into reports of fraudulent iTunes purchases that, in some instances, can drain a user’s bank account.

Why the sudden interest from Coakley?

Well, her credit card was recently stolen and used to make unauthorized purchaes on iTunes. Confounding matters, Coakley was none too pleased with Apple’s refusal to either address the unauthorized purchases or report them to Massachusetts regulators.

When asked about whether such fraud constitutes a reportable event under the Bay State’s strict data breach notification law, Coakley said that her office would be looking into that question and demanding answers from Cupertino, California based Apple.

In stark contrast to Apple, Coakley explained that after her credit card information was skimmed, thieves used it to purchase a notebook computer from Dell’s online website. Dell, however, promptly recognized the attempted purchase as a fraudulent transaction and contacted Coakley.

These crooks, however, experienced no push back at all when purchasing an avalanche of media from the iTunes store and emptying Coakley’s bank account in the process.

Informed of the well documented pattern of fraud through iTunes, in which stolen credit cards or bogus iTunes gift cards are matched with compromised iTunes accounts and used to purchase merchandise, Coakley said she wasn’t aware of the larger pattern, but that it could be a reportable offense under the State’s data privacy law. She promised her office would be contacting Apple for more information that very afternoon – a statement that received hearty applause from the audience.

via Threat Post