Unrecognized Apple TV charges on credit card

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Level 1

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Unrecognized Apple TV charges on credit card

Do you see charges from Apple on your credit card statement that you don't recognize? If you're like me, you probably have several charges every month. One for data storage, one for TV, etc. They all just say APPLE, with no detail. Until recently, I just glossed over all these charges. But when I started paying more attention, I came to the inescapable conclusion that someone else has been using my credit card number to pay for their Apple TV subscription for the past three and a half years. (I notified the bank and cancelled the card.)

I know, I'm an idiot for not noticing this earlier. I do blame Apple in part, however, for not providing any detail about the charges directly on the statement. You can review charges to your account on your phone or at icloud.com, which is how I finally figured out what was going on. The extra monthly charges did not appear in my account. I tried to contact Apple but couldn't get past the automated system, which was useless. My bank could provide no detail about the charges, but suggested that they might be fraudulent.

Every month since June 2022, there have been two charges that varied by a few cents each month, but which closely tracked the (steadily increasing) monthly charge for Apple TV. I concluded that the difference was a matter of sales tax. My rate is 8.25%, and this corresponds to one of the two charges. The fraudulent charges have been taxed at a rate of 6.2%, which explains the small difference.

I wonder how widespread this little trick is. Is it common knowledge among fraudsters that if you use stolen credit card numbers to make small purchases you'll probably never get caught?

Posted on Dec 5, 2025 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Phil0124

Level 10

216,692 points

Dec 5, 2025 9:05 AM in response to Gullbyrd

Scammers don't usually add stolen cards to their Apple accounts, since that can be easily linked to them and they really don't want that.

They'll usually just make a purchase once, for crypto currency or some other equally untraceable item.

What you describe sounds more like a forgotten subscription, either on a different account of yours (if you made a new Apple account at any point) or from someone you share your payment method with, or if you are the organizer of a family sharing group, another member of the group.

Also, people have been known to start subscriptions on different devices with different accounts and forget about them.

If you say started a subscription on a Google Tv device or Roku through their platform and then subscribed directly through Apple for instance.

Since the charge does not actually appear on your account, its hard to say its actually a secondary subscription for Apple TV, it may be for something entirely different.

If you log in to https://reportaproblem.apple.com it may appear there and identify what it's for. If its still not there, you don't share your payment method with anybody, or are the Family Organizer in a family sharing group, or used to have a different Apple Account, then it is possibly fraud, but that just seems unlikely.

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