Ruthless Hackers!

One morning in January as I was checking my e-mail, I noticed 5 e-mails all from PayPal stating that a transaction of $20 to Apple had been conducted.  The other weird thing about this is that it had just happened moments before I opened my e-mail. 

Needless to say, I was completely freaking out.  Someone had obviously hacked into my Apple account and bought $100 worth of stuff.  When I looked at my Apple account though, I couldn’t find any record of these transactions. 

When I got to work, I immediately found a number to call PayPal and told them what happened and they immediately refunded my money – no questions asked.  They did confirm that five $20 certificates to Apple had been purchased.  I agreed to cut-off all payments to Apple at this time.  In reality I had to close the PayPal account altogether as I never had it changed into my married name and it was too much of a hassle to have it changed. 

I figured I’d sort the whole “Apple” end of it later that night.  When Chris got home that night he opened up his e-mail and found 5 e-mails from Apple stating that transactions of $20 each had been done on his account.  We were in shock thinking how could we both be hit?

After a little more digging we figured out that what had actually happened was that the certificates were bought on Chris’s Apple account, which was linked to my PayPal account.  So it was him that got hacked not me.  He then had to go and do a whole lot of scrambling.  Of which one was to contact Apple and inform them of the breech.

First time I’ve ever had an issue with on-line transactions (identity theft type thing) but in all reality it was not that bad, and we got all our money reimbursed.  From this experience alone, I would definitely recommend PayPal as a way to make safe transactions.  And all Hackers should be shot!