At the end of June, Index was one of the first companies to report on the Apple scandal, which arose as a result of the global company wrongly draining the bank accounts of Hungarian users – likely due to a bug in the Hungarian App Store. From one of our readers, for example 550,000 Hungarian forints were withdrawn in 74 transactions in 5 minutes, then his bank blocked his card. As a rule, previous Apple subscriptions or purchases made via Apple Pay are discounted again by the system.
Apple was also informed of what happened, but only that Card companies sent out a list of transactions that included erroneous charges with significant delays. Until then, it was not clear whether Apple itself or the banks would undertake to cancel the erroneous debts and return the amounts. The card companies transmitted this data to the banks, which arranged for refunds of the discounted amounts.
theCase Z, Hungarian National Bank also monitoringwhich prompted Local banking institutionsTo compensate their customers as quickly as possible, most of the affected parties were able in the first week of July to recover the amounts deducted as a result of the error – amounting to 2 billion forints. Thanks to this case, more light has been shed on For cyber fraudAnd those For protectionHowever, it looks like another Apple scandal is about to explode after the company started deducting money from users' accounts again.
As one of our readers pointed out in his morning letter to our editors, he noticed several new, unknown transactions overnight.
They took money from me 13 times starting at 1:37 every minute or two. I contacted Hungarian customer service and they also found out this morning from the customers, but they don't know anything. They told me to call them back in a day or two
He added.
The Hungarian National Bank has since issued a statement on the matter, stating that MNB and the Hungarian Banking Association are taking steps to ensure customer safety and stability of financial markets.
Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) has been informed of recurring payment issues with Apple. As a result, MNB Bank immediately contacted payment service providers and began taking measures to protect customers. During this activity, the Central Bank cooperates closely with the Hungarian Banking Association, with which it has a permanent working relationship
they wrote in their statement.
As a result of the withdrawals in June, the majority of banks became more prepared for such situations, so they took steps immediately, they added. According to their claim, and according to preliminary yet unconfirmed data, unlike previous issues, a much smaller number of customers are now affected by the disruption. It should be noted that MNB will continue to provide information on developments.
How to defend against attacks
Just like that Peter Gergely, financial expert at BiztosDöntés.hu, has reported on the previous case, which is Recurring payment solutions have become very popular in recent years, and online service providers prefer this payment method, which is characterized by It automatically fulfills the service provider's payment request while the license is valid, where it sees the customer's authorization to pay. The authorization is not tied to a time limit or amount, so, for example, after a service fee increases, the customer automatically pays the higher fee.
But according to the expert's suggestion, to avoid such problems, the following aspects should be taken into account in order to protect ourselves from such problems: Of harassment:
- It may be useful to set up a separate bank card for such online payments, as you should always keep only the amount of money that approximately covers the fees for the required online revolving services.
- An online payment card also helps us avoid more serious losses if our bank card data falls into unauthorized hands.
- If a customer sometimes pays a larger amount online, he can transfer a larger amount from his traditional account to the card at any time, from which the higher amount can be paid.
- An online payment limit can be set for the online card, which does not allow the service provider to make payments above the specified limit. According to the expert, this solution alone would not have prevented the loss resulting from the current error, since the AppleStore usually ships a few thousand HUF items to the cards, but in other cases it could provide customers with a huge service – especially in cases of misuse, it Prevents accounts from being overdrawn.
- Some banks automatically set SMS or messaging about payments to only send messages above a certain amount (1000, 2000). According to Peter Gergely, everyone should replace SMS with Internet (push) messages sent to mobile phones, with which they can save tens of thousands of forints annually due to lost SMS fees. On the other hand, it is important to adjust the messages from HUF 1, so that we are aware of each payment.
(Cover Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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