4 ms·

> Once I do the chargeback Apple blocks the card from being used with them and can lock my iCloud account. That is a very significant part of the problem. The

> Once I do the chargeback Apple blocks the card from being used with them and can lock my iCloud account. That is a very significant part of the problem. The hold cloud service providers have on customers. I am pretty sure this would be illegal. In the UK I would be going to the small claims court, or trading standards (a government agency) or the card company (which has joint liability for anything bought with a credit card here - not true for debit cards).

Szpadel 2y ago
if they just block the card number, issuing a new virtual card from your bank (or use revolut or something like that) would easily solve this
- Maxious 2y ago
  > "connect all physical and virtual versions of a card" https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/products/documents/visa-token-service-payment-account-reference-inquiry-fact-sheet.pdf https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/products/docume...
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  The scary part for an iphone user shackled to Apple is: > "can lock my iCloud account."
- Aachen 2y ago
  If they didn't have trouble getting a card at all in the first place. Credit scores aren't always accurate (I didn't even know Europe had such a thing before moving to Germany and starting with a blank slate that defaulted to "and so we can't guarantee anything so: no") and you need one of these numbers to do normal things in life like getting a hotel room on occasion. "Just get another one" isn't a choice one can necessarily make. Generating another number isn't an option my bank has either (eventually got a card after finding some else to be co-guarantor which this bank accepted — I don't even want to buy on credit, I just want to be able to fairly pay for things up front, and that's how this card seems to function in the first place)
  - graemep 2y ago
    In the UK we have credit reports, but each lender will calculate their own score so the "scores" you get credit reference agencies are rarely important. You can get a debit card quite easily here.
ryandrake 2y ago
It's long past time for people to wake up and realize how dependent they are on these cloud services, and make the choice to de-cloudify themselves. Losing your MegaCorpAccount should not ruin your life. Yet here we are with people hanging all their precious online assets (including their primary E-mail address!!) onto these tenuous free accounts, where they have no recourse if the company just stops doing business with them. People really need to understand how much of a Faustian bargain it is to enjoy and become so dependent on cloud services. Make it a 2025 goal to get your life off these accounts. By 31-Dec-2025, you should be in the situation where you are not even inconvenienced if Google or Apple or Meta were to suddenly ban your account.
- trogdor 2y ago
  > By 31-Dec-2025, you should be in the situation where you are not even inconvenienced if Google or Apple or Meta were to suddenly ban your account. Have you done this for yourself? What was your process?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I'd say I have little enough stored in the cloud now to be OK with losing my accounts. The only thing that would still sting is losing access to the Apple app store, since it's the only way to effectively use their phones. Next phone will likely be non-Apple, but our household still has iDevices. Most important was taking back my own E-mail and not relying on someone else for it. This took three steps: 1. Get my own domain (this I did over a decade ago), 2. point the MX record to my own VPS and start by simply forwarding to/from Gmail, 3. Actually hosting delivery and serving myself (I use exim4 for delivery and dovecot for IMAP, but there are many other ways to self-host). This can be easily moved to a different host if my VPS provider decides to get rid of me. In theory I can host it on bare metal at home, although I admit I have not actually tried it to verify I can. I'm only dependent on my DNS registrar, which is a bummer but AFAIK unavoidable. For social media, that was incredibly easy: I last used Facebook over 10 years ago, LinkedIn over 5 years ago, and don't have any other accounts, so I've been off S.M. pretty much forever. For photos and media, I moved everything to a NAS on my LAN, backed up twice (one stored at home, another stored elsewhere). Docs, obviously just store locally in a format readable by your own PC. Anything you simply have to have in Google Docs, have a backup locally. For IoT / Home Automation stuff, I carefully make sure that the ecosystem I buy into is self-hosted and does not require the Internet. Security cameras, thermostats, switches and lights and so on must all be usable and controllable locally. I'm not quite there yet on all of these either, but they are easily swapped out if some manufacturer's lame cloud goes down. Not sure if I'm forgetting anything.

Szpadel 2y ago

if they just block the card number, issuing a new virtual card from your bank (or use revolut or something like that) would easily solve this

Maxious 2y ago
> "connect all physical and virtual versions of a card" https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/products/documents/visa-token-service-payment-account-reference-inquiry-fact-sheet.pdf https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/products/docume...
catlikesshrimp 2y ago
The scary part for an iphone user shackled to Apple is: > "can lock my iCloud account."
Aachen 2y ago
If they didn't have trouble getting a card at all in the first place. Credit scores aren't always accurate (I didn't even know Europe had such a thing before moving to Germany and starting with a blank slate that defaulted to "and so we can't guarantee anything so: no") and you need one of these numbers to do normal things in life like getting a hotel room on occasion. "Just get another one" isn't a choice one can necessarily make. Generating another number isn't an option my bank has either (eventually got a card after finding some else to be co-guarantor which this bank accepted — I don't even want to buy on credit, I just want to be able to fairly pay for things up front, and that's how this card seems to function in the first place)
- graemep 2y ago
  In the UK we have credit reports, but each lender will calculate their own score so the "scores" you get credit reference agencies are rarely important. You can get a debit card quite easily here.

ryandrake 2y ago

It's long past time for people to wake up and realize how dependent they are on these cloud services, and make the choice to de-cloudify themselves. Losing your MegaCorpAccount should not ruin your life. Yet here we are with people hanging all their precious online assets (including their primary E-mail address!!) onto these tenuous free accounts, where they have no recourse if the company just stops doing business with them. People really need to understand how much of a Faustian bargain it is to enjoy and become so dependent on cloud services. Make it a 2025 goal to get your life off these accounts. By 31-Dec-2025, you should be in the situation where you are not even inconvenienced if Google or Apple or Meta were to suddenly ban your account.

trogdor 2y ago
> By 31-Dec-2025, you should be in the situation where you are not even inconvenienced if Google or Apple or Meta were to suddenly ban your account. Have you done this for yourself? What was your process?
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I'd say I have little enough stored in the cloud now to be OK with losing my accounts. The only thing that would still sting is losing access to the Apple app store, since it's the only way to effectively use their phones. Next phone will likely be non-Apple, but our household still has iDevices. Most important was taking back my own E-mail and not relying on someone else for it. This took three steps: 1. Get my own domain (this I did over a decade ago), 2. point the MX record to my own VPS and start by simply forwarding to/from Gmail, 3. Actually hosting delivery and serving myself (I use exim4 for delivery and dovecot for IMAP, but there are many other ways to self-host). This can be easily moved to a different host if my VPS provider decides to get rid of me. In theory I can host it on bare metal at home, although I admit I have not actually tried it to verify I can. I'm only dependent on my DNS registrar, which is a bummer but AFAIK unavoidable. For social media, that was incredibly easy: I last used Facebook over 10 years ago, LinkedIn over 5 years ago, and don't have any other accounts, so I've been off S.M. pretty much forever. For photos and media, I moved everything to a NAS on my LAN, backed up twice (one stored at home, another stored elsewhere). Docs, obviously just store locally in a format readable by your own PC. Anything you simply have to have in Google Docs, have a backup locally. For IoT / Home Automation stuff, I carefully make sure that the ecosystem I buy into is self-hosted and does not require the Internet. Security cameras, thermostats, switches and lights and so on must all be usable and controllable locally. I'm not quite there yet on all of these either, but they are easily swapped out if some manufacturer's lame cloud goes down. Not sure if I'm forgetting anything.