"I Never Used It": Wave of Unauthorized Charges for '299,000 Won' via ChatGPT

[Anchor]

Recently, there has been a series of unauthorized charges of 299,000 won linked to the AI service ChatGPT. So far, more than 800 cases of such damages have been confirmed.

Reporter Lee Tae-kwon has the story.

[Reporter]

An office worker surnamed Lee received a text message on June 3 notifying him that 299,000 won had been charged to his debit card.

The charge was for a one-month subscription to the most expensive "Pro" plan for ChatGPT, a generative AI service he had never used.

[Lee/Victim of unauthorized charge: I had never even entered my card number, but suddenly a payment was made... It was honestly very frightening. I'm worried that this might happen with my other cards as well.]

Since the beginning of this month, 1,368 payments for the ChatGPT Pro plan have been made in Korea, totaling approximately 400 million won.

Among these, 858 cases, amounting to about 250 million won, have been identified as suspected fraudulent transactions.

The payments were processed through nine major credit card companies, including Lotte, NH Nonghyup, and KB Kookmin.

Payments can be made by entering a card number, expiration date, date of birth, and the first two digits of the PIN. It is presumed that someone obtained this information to carry out the transactions.

[Hwang Seok-jin/Professor at Dongguk University's Graduate School of Information Security: They might be checking if the card numbers are valid, or they could be bundling these details after the payment and selling them as a package to generate profit.]

OpenAI, the operator of ChatGPT, stated, "It has been confirmed that ChatGPT did not initiate payments without user consent, but rather that stolen card information was used without authorization," adding that they have "deactivated the affected payment methods."

NICE Information & Telecommunications, OpenAI's domestic payment gateway provider, explained that they have already canceled about 700 of the suspected fraudulent transactions and are currently reviewing the remaining cases.

They also announced that they have temporarily suspended additional payments and new card registrations, and plan to introduce an additional mobile phone identity verification process.

The Financial Supervisory Service stated that it has requested credit card companies to strengthen their detection of abnormal transactions.

(Reported by Lee Moo-jin and Kim Han-gyeol | Video edited by Choi Jin-hwa | Graphics by Jegal Chan)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.