What you need to know
- A woman lost her Hermès Apple Watch at the EPCOT Center while on a ride.
- Someone found the Apple Watch and ran up $40,000 in credit card charges.
- It isn't clear whether the watch had a strong passcode assigned to it.
No word on how strong the Apple Watch's passcode was.
A woman who says she dropped and lost her Apple Watch at the EPCOT Center has now filed a police report saying that she is on the hook for $40,000 in fraudulent credit card charges as a result.
According to a WDWNT report, the unnamed woman was riding "the slow-moving The Seas with Nemo & Friends attraction on April 13" while "fidgeting with her Apple watch." The inevitable happened — the $1,300 Hermès Apple Watch fell from her wrist and despite attempts by her husband to retrieve it, park employees prevented that from happening. Fast forward a few hours and the credit card charges began, helped in part by an American Express credit card that had an unlimited credit limit and was signed up for Apple Pay.
The woman had good reason to be worried. She had several credit cards linked to the watch, including an American Express card with an unlimited credit line, the report said.
The woman, who was staying at Disney's Contemporary Resort, filed an incident with Disney Guest Relations to see if anyone had retrieved the fallen watch. She went back later, and no one had turned it in. "The staff advised her that they did not have the watch," the report said.
Then came the fraud alerts.
A police report filed at the Orange County Sheriff's Office doesn't say what the $40,000 was spent on, and it isn't known how this all went down. An Apple Watch, once found, requires a passcode to be entered or to be near a synced iPhone before it can be in a position to make payments. Was the passcode one that was easy to guess?
Now might be a good time to set a strong Apple Watch passcode if you haven't already. The same goes for your iPhone, too!
Apple Pay is one of the best Apple Watch features around, thanks in part to its security. But that security is only as good as your passcode, unfortunately.