Is it possible that my iPad got infected with something?

[GAMESHARQ]

I'll try to sum this up as quickly as I can.

Earlier this year, I had fraudulent activity on my credit card. So I got a replacement card with a new number, but the activity continued. So I completely closed my account with that bank because I didn't know what else to do.

I got a new card with a different bank and since then, I've only used the card on my iPad because I figured if there was a virus somewhere, it was on my PC.

Today I had fraudulent activity on my new card and since I've never used it on my PC, I can only assume that there is something on my iPad that someone is using to track my personal info.

I always thought iOS was significantly more secure than Windows. My iPad is not jailbroken and I've only ever downloaded apps from iTunes so I don't know how I could have contracted something bad.

What are the chances that I have something bad on my iPad? I did a full factory restore on my iPad just now so I'm hoping if there was something bad on it, it's gone now.

 

[Caesars]

Probably possible,but I haven't heard of it yet.


Air2

 

[scifan57]

I'll try to sum this up as quickly as I can.

Earlier this year, I had fraudulent activity on my credit card. So I got a replacement card with a new number, but the activity continued. So I completely closed my account with that bank because I didn't know what else to do.

I got a new card with a different bank and since then, I've only used the card on my iPad because I figured if there was a virus somewhere, it was on my PC.

Today I had fraudulent activity on my new card and since I've never used it on my PC, I can only assume that there is something on my iPad that someone is using to track my personal info.

I always thought iOS was significantly more secure than Windows. My iPad is not jailbroken and I've only ever downloaded apps from iTunes so I don't know how I could have contracted something bad.

What are the chances that I have something bad on my iPad? I did a full factory restore on my iPad just now so I'm hoping if there was something bad on it, it's gone now.

There are no known viruses that can infect an iPad or any other iOS device. Apple is one of the safest places to use your credit card online. If someone got your credit card number and was using it fraudulently, it's almost certain that they got the number from somewhere else other than your iPad.

Programs such as key loggers, which could be used by a scammer to track your activity, cannot be installed on a non jailbroken iPad.

 

[twerppoet]

There are several levels of risk when using a credit card online. The iPad itself, as a platform, is fairly low risk, however;

Any transaction on an open wi-fi network caries risk. It does not matter what device you are using. The deciding factor is whether you have secure connection to the site itself. There are several factors that determine this, but two things are the most important. One is the that the site itself uses a secure connection. You can usually tell this by the URL having the "https://" header instead of just "http://". You browser should also show a small lock symbol somewhere in or near the URL field. The second is the the transport. Open wi-fi is susceptible to man in the middle attacks, where the crook pretends to be your destination server to you, and you to the destination. The defense against this is VPN (Virtual Private Network). Using a VPN service creates a private, encrypted pipe between you and your destination. That way, even if someone intercepts the traffic there is nothing they can do with it.

Another risk is the security of the site itself. You've heard of places like Target getting hacked and losing credit card numbers. Smaller vendors are also at risk. There is little you can about this except choose sites with decent reputations and carry fraud protection on your credit card. I have a single, low limit, credit card that I use for the majority of my online transaction.

By far the biggest risk is sites that trick you into entering your credit card information, or other private information like accounts. There is no device or software that can protect you from this. You just have to be careful. Never enter private information when following a link from an email or any other third party. No legitimate site should ask you for this information in an email or other message. Always go directly to the site from you own bookmarks, entering the URL, or a search.

The least common cause of identity theft, on any platform, is a virus or malware on the user's device or computer. That's not to say it's not important. It is, but in most cases it is not how credit card information is stollen; because the other methods are more efficient, and generally require less work on the criminals part.