Apple, meet my computer

If Apple wants to freak me out about someone hacking my account, they're doing a pretty good job.

At comically regular intervals, they tell me that I am renting a movie from iTunes using a device that has not been used before. It happened most recently on Saturday night, when I rented the movie What's Up, Doc? for viewing sometime before the end of July.

And truly: What is up, Doc?

(I should ask Bugs Bunny since I only just last week watched Space Jam: A New Legacy.)

I've had this computer since about November, and in that time, I have rented at least two dozen movies using it. Yet because I tend to save all my emails like the filthy hoarder that I am, I can tell you exactly how many times they've considered this to be a foreign device.

Going backward:

June 13th:

"Dear Vance,

Your AppleID, vance@vance.com, was just used to rent What Lies Below on a computer or device that has not previously been used."

January 24th:

"Dear Vance,

Your AppleID, vance@vance.com, was just used to rent 'Le Labo' by East Ave on a computer or device that has not previously been used."

(It's not only movies, it's music too.)

January 22nd:

"Dear Vance,

Your AppleID, vance@vance.com, was just used to rent Being John Malkovich on a computer or device that has not previously been used."

How could a device that was used two days before this message not previously have been used?

The one before that was in September, which I guess was probably on my old computer -- but that wouldn't have been nearly the first time I rented from that computer either. 

I'd get it if it would "forget" me every six months maybe. I'm not that memorable.

But it sent me this warning for What Lies Below, which was only a month ago. Come on, I don't blend into the scenery that much.

It's almost as though some sort of algorithm has been run on the titles that has alerted them to potential fraudulent behavior. "Warning! Warning! This same person would never rent Being John Malkovich, What Lies Below and What's Up, Doc. Truly: What is up, Doc?"

Each of these messages also advise that I could be getting this message because I had recently changed my password. But I damn sure know I didn't do that. I mean, part of my password is the numbers "2018."

I also know that you can have iTunes wiped from a computer and reinstalled, which resets some kind of code that Apple has to relate this computer to this iTunes account. But that didn't happen in this case either.

The best clue might lie in this sentence that appears in each email:

"This purchase was initiated from Australia."

Aye, there's the rub. They know this is a U.S. iTunes account but they know someone is accessing it from Australia. That's where the laptop stolen on vacation (as if people are vacationing internationally right now) sets off red flags for them. 

But this still doesn't totally explain it, because if they did any digging into the purchase history, they would know that purchases initiated from Australia are consistent with the activity history on this account, not divergent from it. 

So the mystery remains. We don't, in the end, know what is up, Doc. We don't know what lies below, but we do know it might just be an infinity of things that look the same failing to identify each other:

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.