“APL*ITUNES/BILL”, What Is This?

If your bank statements or online billing statements contain charges starting with "APL *" such as 'APL*iTunes bill' then these bills are for your online purchases made via your Apple ID. These purchases may include different apps, games, movies, TV shows, songs, iTunes, Apple Music, books, iCloud services or any other product or service related to iOS & macOS. 

You should keep an eye on those transactions either made by your bank account, debit or credit card. This is a quicker way to point out fraudulent billing charges being charged from your account so that you can get rid of fraudulent & unauthorized charges by reporting these to your bank or your card issuer. 

If you are facing unfamiliar & unauthorized bills being charged from your account, then read this article carefully to track & get rid of unfamiliar fraudulent charges. 

But before taking any action against any unauthorized billing make sure by following instructions that these bills actually do not belong to you. 

1. Apple offers its users a feature called 'family sharing' in which your allowed family members can make purchases by paying through your account & payment methods. Via this family sharing feature, your family member can make purchases from iTunes, Apple Store, Apple books etc. It means your family member can make any sort of purchase and only you have to pay charges if you are an organizer of your family in this family sharing plan. 

If you feel that your family members are making unusual & unnecessary purchases from your payment account you can modify this from your device setting.

Open the setting menu of your iOS device, then tap on , now go to the family sharing tab, followed by 'shared features» Purchase sharing.

To modify the family sharing feature on Mac click on the small Apple icon & open the Apple menu. Click on System preferences » Family Sharing » Purchase Sharing.

You can also switch to smart control via enabling the 'ask to buy' feature. Enabling this feature means, you will be notified & asked to pay for every purchase your family member makes.  

To enable this feature on an iOS device simply open your main setting menu of the device  »   » Family sharing tab  » Family member name whose purchases you wanna control  » and tap on ask to buy. macOS users can do the trick by clicking the small Apple icon to open up the Apple menu.  In the Apple menu, go to System Preferences  » tap on iCloud  » Name of a family member whose purchases you wanna control  » and tap on ask to buy option.

2. It is more confusing & very usual that you could not recognize certain charges as Apple merges many charges into a single one which makes it very tricky for the users to recognize certain charges. 

3. If your device is shared with your wife, any buddy, child or colleague then there is also a possibility that anyone with which you are sharing the device may make some purchases. 

4. Some charges may be caused by some in-app Apple purchases. For instance, if you tried a free trial of any in-app service by giving a card number linked with your Apple ID but you forgot about the end date & cancellation of this free trial. Then as the trial date ends the in-app service starts charging from your account. If you have received an unauthorized charge receipt then you should also check your subscription and cancel out an unwanted subscription if there is any. To check out your subscriptions & their status, go to settings »   » subscriptions and cancel out subscriptions that unwillingly are there. 

5. Go for a complete checkout of your Apple purchases either from the Apple store or for services. You can check them from the purchase history of your Apple ID. Here is how to check it out. 

• iPhone, iPod or iPad users can do it by going to the device setting  » Your name  » iTunes & App store tab  »  Here click on your Apple ID   » and click on View Apple ID. It may ask you to sign in here with your Apple ID. Sign in and roll your finger to go down to the purchase history.
• You can also manage your purchase history by browsing reportaproblem.apple.com from any device. Log in to your Apple ID here to go to your purchase history. 

If you are still unable to solve the puzzle of recognizing all the charges then go for the below-given steps. 

1. You have to log in with your family members' ID because purchase history will only show you charges of purchases made by your family members, not those which they bought. 
2. If you are using multiple Apple IDs at a time, then there is a possibility that made a purchase via any of your other Apple IDs. In this case, you must check the purchase history of those Apple IDs as well. If you are not using any Apple ID or do not require multiple IDs then you can also delete those unwanted IDs. 

In case you don't know anything about your other Apple IDs you can check them out by visiting https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid.

If you have gone through all the above-mentioned steps and processes and still you are unable to recognize some charges being charged from your account, then go for these steps. 

• If all the above-given credentials are unable to solve your problem then it is mighty possible that someone knows your & making purchases via your ID. Go for password change right now. 
• On an iOS device, open the device setting  » (Your Name)  » Password & security tab  » and change the password. 
• You can also manage your Apple ID by browsing https://appleid.apple.com via any device's browser. Login to Apple ID and go to the security section to set a new password from the change password section. 
• After making all the checkouts, if you are pretty sure that those charges are not related to you or any of your family members, you can request a refund.
•  Contact your bank or your financial organization to replace your bank card or debit card with a newer one. 
• for further information & help, you can visit Apple’s site.

How many family members are allowed in 'family sharing' feature?

You can link as many as 6 family members in a family sharing plan.

How to control family members purchase via my Apple ID?

You can control unwanted, unnecessary & unusual purchases of your family members by enabling 'Ask to Buy' feature which will ask you before paying for any purchase made by your family members.