ugh you internet

January 2, 2008 11:47 PM

Did my mama get scammed by itunes look-alike?

She typed in itunes.com and was brought to a site that looked like an itunes website, not that she'd ever seen the apple one, where it said it was like $49.90 a month for unlimited downloading, so she registered and paid through paypal and then couldn't find the website again.

Everytime I try typing in itunes.com it goes to apple.com/itunes and my 12 year old sister knew that that is not where they went.

Okay so it completely sounds like a scam, but how far can it go? can they go around buying stuff forever with her paypal or is the $50 just gone? Has anyone ever heard about this kind of thing? Do they now have our name and address and everything? just freaking out a little..

posted by rubberkey to computers & internet (9 comments total)

p.s. it says clickbank under name/email/phone section on her paypal statement thing. i dont know if that helps anything.
posted by rubberkey at 11:53 PM on January 2, 2008

These guys?
posted by vacapinta at 11:54 PM on January 2, 2008

According to comments here, people have been able to successfully demand a refund.
posted by vacapinta at 12:01 AM on January 3, 2008

first, she was here:
http://www.ipod-itunes-download.com/

after she registered, it brought her here:
http://members-site.net/ipod/download_music.htm

and thats the part that made her say "uh, what?"

is this a known website for that?
posted by rubberkey at 12:32 AM on January 3, 2008

The order form on that ipod-itunes-download.com site is processed through the ClickBank system. You may want to try requesting a refund through this form: http://www.clickbank.com/csinquiry.html
posted by punishinglemur at 12:54 AM on January 3, 2008

Dude, your mama got scammed by an itunes not-lookalike. Your mama needs to become more cynical. i'm assuming that she actually typed "itunes.com" into her browser's search box, instead of the address field. I just tried that and the top Google paid ad result was for a very questionable looking tune-player.com. Sheep's clothing.

They have whatever information you gave them. Assuming that your mom actually used the PayPal site to complete the transaction instead of giving tune-player.com her PayPal username and password, then I guess they have her name and email address. If she did completely expose her PayPal authentication info to them, then yes, you should be more concerned, and should be getting in touch with PayPal immediately. Good luck with that.
posted by mumkin at 1:38 AM on January 3, 2008

Another possibility: Just about every possible variation on itunes.com -- transposed letters, double letters, missing letters, QWERTY errors -- is registered to someone. Many possible itunes.com typos I tried led me to sites similar to the one rubberkey's mother apparently ended up at.
posted by punishinglemur at 2:51 AM on January 3, 2008

PayPal is generally pretty buyer-friendly when it comes to transaction disputes, so I'd just give them a call and explain the situation. Their customer service number is 1-888-221-1161.
posted by emmastory at 5:46 AM on January 3, 2008

Like mumkin said, given what's been said here, you should probably just err on the side of caution and assume she exposed her login/password pair to the fraudulent site - even though she may not have - and immediately change both.
posted by uaudio at 6:49 AM on January 3, 2008