your understanding is incorrect. Apple has explicitly stated that the transaction is 100% between The Merchant, Your Bank, and you. Apple does not receive a copy of the transaction, they don't know who you've shopped with, and that they don't know that any specific transaction has happened.

The only thing Apple does is act as the facilitator to getting the device-specific account number in to the phone. So Apple could know which credit cards you have setup in your device and that's about it.

I'm not actually sure if this is entirely correct. I don't think the fingerprint chip actually has the encryption key. Whenever you power-cycle an iPhone with a passcode/password, you are required to unlock it the first time with the full password. You can't unlock it with just your fingerprint.

My guess is that it needs the passcode to decrypt the contents of the databases, and then it uses the fingerprints as a quick-unlock feature when the device was put to sleep, but the keys are still in memory.

That is fair. I thought it was odd that they just "purchased" it for everybody rather than just make the price free for a month and people could go and claim it. I didn't bother me either way.

So don't turn on the auto download feature then. When you want to download it to your device, then open your list of purchases and download it manually.

The auto download feature isn't turned on by default. It's off by default. So you'd have to know of it's existence for it to be on.

Apple does have that option as well. You can set a bit such that the phone will only download new purchases over wifi.

You never needed to give apple any money to get the music for free. All you needed was an iTunes account/password and you got the album for free. No prior purchase was necessary. In fact, if you sign up for a free iTunes account before some day in October, you still get the album for free...no purchases required.

They can not. The only people who had the album pushed to their device are those who turned on the flag on their devices to download new purchases. The only thing Apple did was flag that album as purchased for all iTunes accounts. The device then dutifully did as it was told by it's owner and downloaded all purchases.

The album never showed up on my devices because I don't have that flag turned on.

so...SCOTCOM? Sounds like a nuclear missile satellite

wow. really? If someone steals my phone and hacks off my thumb, then one of the last things that i'm going to worry about is them going to a McDonalds and hold up a bloodied iPhone and dismembered finger up to the payment system to buy a cheeseburger.

I made the ICQ "uh oh" sound my text message sound a while back. Oh the memories...

Depends on how you interpret the semantics of their statement/recording.

"This call may be recorded for quality assurance" is vague. That may be their notification to me that they are recording the call, but it could also be interpreted as "you may record this call for quality assurance". Either interpretation fits the statement of "This call may be recorded for quality assurance".

I would think that, since they are effective monopolies in the areas they serve, that their franchise agreements don't let them just ditch customers that are troublemaking. I know this is up to each individual municipality, but I would hope there would be conditions in there on who they have to serve and the reasons that are allowed for them to not serve someone.

I would think that once both parties have agreed that the call is going to be recorded (via the automated message) that you would have no legal issues with recording the call yourself. Basically, as long as proper consent has been given to record the call (whether it's a 1-party state or 2-party state), then it doesn't matter who is doing the recording or where.

IANAL. Not legal advice, etc. etc.

I think you would just go to the front desk and have them issue you a traditional key in this scenario.