[beweinreich]

I woke up to the strangest customer support conversation with Apple.

Around 8:15am, I checked my email and noticed I had been auto-subscribed to a free trial of Apple Music.

Weird. I'm a Spotify user, and wouldn't have started a trial. So, I asked my wife, and she said she hadn't done anything with Apple Music.

Hmm, maybe my account was hacked. That would be quite a predicament since I use 1password with crazy long passwords for all services. So, I contacted Apple Support over SMS to ask how and why the Apple Music subscription got initiated.

They told me that Apple auto-subscribed me because I was given a free month... and it was done at 5:14am (when everyone in my house was asleep).

The whole conversation felt like a phishing scam. Decided to move to phone support, and they are telling me my Apple TV in my living room subscribed me.

Is it possible for someone to remote into my Apple TV and auto-subscribe me? I wouldn't have guessed an Apple TV to be hackable.

[beweinreich]

OK as a follow up on the phone and they mentioned 5:14 AM timestamp.

I asked what time zone it was and they told me they didn’t know. It doesn’t show up for them.

I’m in New York. So I’m guessing it’s UTC and it was actually 814am not 514am.

[captn3m0]

Do you have a Apple Family subscription?

[beweinreich]

I do. And that’s what I thought at first. But they said the purchase came from the Apple TV.

I asked if there’s was a way the family account could’ve triggered it to look like it’s from the Apple TV but they said no. It was purchased on tv.

[jjgreen]

Not a small child pissing around with the TV before anyone else gets up? You got logs on that thing?

[beweinreich]

Yeah, now I’m suspecting something less malicious.

Speaking to support they don’t know what time zone the 514am timestamp is in. I think it’s likely to be UTC, which means it happened at 814am.

I have a two year old. I’m gonna chalk it up to him. If it was 814am it’s way more likely.

Still super weird cause the tv wasn’t on. But given the time of day, seems much more likely.

[danaris]

Depending on your model of TV and how it's connected, it's possible for the Apple TV to be on and responding to inputs even if the TV is off. If it was on, and a promotional popup came up offering the free trial, then depending on just what the flow is for those popups, it's possible that a small child just fiddling with the remote could accidentally have accepted it.

(I know that our TV is often off while our Apple TV is on; I have no knowledge of how those promotional popups work, as I haven't accepted one.)

[NikkiA]

UTC <> EST is a 5 hour difference, with UTC being ahead of EST, and 05:14 UTC would be 00:14 EST, so just after midnight.

08:14 EST would align with 05:14 PST though

[rasse]

Nice photos!