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Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

• lobito25 10mo ago
  They'll probably reverse this soon, but it's an eye-opener for people who store their entire existence on 3rd party clouds. Nextcloud is your friend.
• iamnothere 10mo ago
  This is one of the worst stories I’ve seen yet. It sounds like they were “all in” on Apple with zero backups, which shows some questionable judgment, but still, this sort of thing shouldn’t be possible any more than a bank deciding to take all your money with no recourse. (They can close your account, but they can’t keep your money.) Maybe hosts should be required to mail you a hard drive with your data on it when they close your account. Regardless, never assume cloud data is in safe hands.
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    I do have backups of most data, including photos, but there are things you can't backup like shared actively edited iWork documents, and things like that. I can rebuild from it, but it's still a shitshow and my very expensive devices are bricked.
    • holigot 10mo ago
      What a nightmare - hope everything will end well. Concerning all those 'bricked' devices it would be really nice to get some more details concerning the 'block'. Can you use your iPhone to call someone, can you use your MacBook overall? Login, use Apple Passwords(!), looking at photos within photos app and so on... Or are all those devices completely locked?
    • xigoi 10mo ago
      > there are things you can't backup like shared actively edited iWork documents If they’re shared, surely someone else can still access them?
    • Aachen 10mo ago
      What's an iWord and why can't it be backed up?
      • thih9 10mo ago
        Nobody said iWord.
        • Aachen 10mo ago
          My apologies, I see I've misread it. Still don't know what iWork is. Surely what the question referred to was obvious
          • parisidau 10mo ago
            Here, I Googled it for you https://www.apple.com/iwork/ https://www.apple.com/iwork/
            • Aachen 10mo ago
              Oh, so I did understand correctly that it's Apple's version of Word etc. My question was why one can't back up one's data though. I'm even more confused now that I know it refers to Pages/Keynote/etc. since those have always been file-based so far as I've seen from classmates who used it. Surely even Apple allows downloading your documents and spreadsheets from whatever storage front-end their live editing server uses?
    • parisidau 10mo ago
      Apple (via Executive Relations) says they won't do anything. Guess I'm stuffed.
  • nickhodge 10mo ago
    When you are an Apple Developer, as the poster states - it goes deeper and more destructive.
  • 0manrho 10mo ago
    > which shows some questionable judgment Convenience is a hell of a drug.
  • st3fan 10mo ago
    Great victim blaming there buddy.
    • beeflet 10mo ago
      To what extent is the victim their own perpetrator? They allow the status quo to succeed by endorsing it. They voted for this with $30,000 of their own money, and they will likely vote again.
      • wiseowise 10mo ago
        So taking a wrong turn should result in you being mugged, raped and subsequently killed because apparently there was some "safe", but less convenient, passage? You're not helping OSS by making claims like these.
        • noitpmeder 10mo ago
          Obviously you're being facetious, that is not at all what that poster is claiming. While I agree that entering a dark alley shouldn't result in ill effects, if ill effects happen in said dark alley it is still worth the discussion to remind people to stay out of dark alleys in today's day and age (or until the root problem, whatever it is, is improved). Pretending that it is OK to enter dark alleys and forcing blame elsewhere will continue to have people unwittingly enter dark alleys.
          • lapcat 10mo ago
            > While I agree that entering a dark alley shouldn't result in ill effects, if ill effects happen in said dark alley it is still worth the discussion to remind people to stay out of dark alleys in today's day and age (or until the root problem, whatever it is, is improved). This is not a dark alley. It's the main street. It's the world we live in. iPhone has more than half the market share in the US and well over a billion users worldwide. Moreover, Apple, Google, and Microsoft collectively monopolize consumer operating systems on both mobile and desktop. Try going into a retail store and buying a computing device that is not running iOS, Android, macOS, or Windows. That's the reality for most people. The dark alleys are the non-mainstream options that hardly anyone knows about.
  • jbstack 10mo ago
    > this sort of thing shouldn’t be possible any more than a bank deciding to take all your money with no recourse. (They can close your account, but they can’t keep your money.) I once had to help a relative sue a bank who had closed his account after he refused to answer their very intrusive questions (they wanted to know details about distant relatives living in another country). They also refused to return his money (tens of thousands) and refused to explain why. No amount of complaining or escalating made any difference, although we did manage to get a nice recording of an employee saying that he thought the bank was in the wrong. It took me issuing court proceedings, plus several more months of negotiating with their lawyer, before they finally settled out of court. Even then they tried to not pay the court fee, and they tried to get us to sign an NDA (I refused to budge on both). Altogether, it took 6 months to get the money. Similar to how people in this thread are talking about mitigating reliance on cloud providers (e.g. with offline backups), I now do not trust any bank. I avoid being in a position where any one bank can ruin my life. That means having multiple accounts and spreading my money around. Luckily for me I have a legal background so when a corp (big or small) does this sort of thing to me I don't hesitate to sue them. In almost all cases this causes them to "wake up" and start taking your issue seriously, in a way that the front line customer support reps never do. I recommend this to the author of the original post.
    • AH4oFVbPT4f8 10mo ago
      Which bank?
      • csomar 10mo ago
        all banks. Any bank that can indefinitely freeze your money and get away with it will do it. And now that everyone is doing it, the reputation damage is minimized.
        • AH4oFVbPT4f8 10mo ago
          Some banks do things that make you never want to do any business with them. Wells Fargo would open checking/savings/credit card accounts without their customers knowing, then Wells Fargo fired thousands of employees as a result of being caught. I will do everything possible to never to business with them.
  • trinix912 10mo ago
    > It sounds like they were “all in” on Apple with zero backups, which shows some questionable judgment iCloud literally encourages users to opt for storing originals only in the cloud. It's marketed as such, it nags you about this every now and then, and iCloud is the preinstalled default cloud storage on every iPhone. Consider non-techies dealing with this too.
  • IshKebab 10mo ago
    You can probably use a GDPR personal information request to get photos and data at least. Doesn't help with other stuff you've paid for though. We really need laws for this sort of thing. They should have included it in the DMA for gatekeepers.
  • insane_dreamer 10mo ago
    > this sort of thing shouldn’t be possible any more than a bank deciding to take all your money with no recourse. (They can close your account, but they can’t keep your money.) To me this is the biggest problem. Just like a bank can decide to close your account at any time, it's reasonable that Apple (or any business) could do the same. But they can't keep your stuff. You can say "don't be naive and assume your cloud data is safe", but in today's world that's like saying "don't keep your money in a bank". The reason I pay for iCloud storage is because it's supposed to be safe (safer than my local HDD going bust or getting lost).
• wombatpm 10mo ago
  Given how Apple Music has completely fucked up my wife’s music collection, I can’t imagine them being able to unfuck your situation at all. So sorry.
  • baby 10mo ago
    oh man, I started with iTunes Match because that's the only service that I could use to backup all my MP3s, and now it's all messed up and so much music has just disappeared from my playlist... so sad. Unfortunately I still don't know a service I can use that will allow me to sync my current MP3s / what I have in Apple Music, and export it if I need it. There's really an issue of owning data and being able to take it elsewhere :/
    • jjtheblunt 10mo ago
      https://tidal.com https://tidal.com ?
      • Groxx 10mo ago
        fwiw: when I've uploaded tracks I've purchased, it almost immediately locks them because they're copyrighted... because AFAICT it's a feature for independent musicians to upload their own stuff, not a library backup. all the text around it seems to support that interpretation.
        • jjtheblunt 10mo ago
          oh that's interesting. i'd tried it several years ago but had not tried uploading anything like you did, so had not noticed that deficiency (randomly).
          • Groxx 10mo ago
            yea - in retrospect I think it's pretty clear about it from the text on the screens... but it surprised me too, because the initial UX is designed exactly like every other "upload your own music library so you can stream it anywhere" feature elsewhere. which is rather strangely blind to their own ecosystem, and tbh I don't see the purpose of a lightweight "upload your recordings from your phone!" feature, artists generally like a bit more control? afaict? or they just stream it somewhere without any metadata, neither of which seems viable with what Tidal's UI supports... but it's pushed in a prominent location for every listener on Tidal. surely there isn't anywhere near enough use to justify that... right? I'm relatively happy with Tidal, but there are definitely a number of moments with it that make me sigh and internally say "see, this is why Spotify is winning". so much of it would be easy to change too, they just don't do it.
• pfooti 10mo ago
  I have had an apple id problem myself, for the past N years. Mine is an old mac.com account, which has my Gmail address as the backup email (and the primary one now that mac.com isn't doing email anymore). Because of this, I cannot sign up for a new account with my Gmail (it is tied to the older mac.com account). I've managed to reset the password, but I must answer a security question to log in. I mean, I answered those security questions probably a decade ago and I do not know what they are anymore. You can reset your security questions, but to do that you need to use an iPhone (last one I owned was a 4) that is still logged in, or, answer a security question. Which is as we established, the problem. So every couple of months I log in, try a few other possible answers, get them wrong, and get locked out for a bit. Anyway, I need to get this fixed my march, due to apple being the formula one streamer in my country now, so I have to actually solve the problem of logging in to my apple account. Or, I guess, making another random email just so I can watch f1. Sigh. But if anyone knows how to reset security questions, I'd love to know. I would way rather pay apple actual money than go back to torrenting the races.
  • burnt-resistor 10mo ago
    Add and verify another primary email address. On a device: Settings > (iCloud user) > Sign-in & Security -> (+) {{name}}@gmail.com If that doesn't work, then use the dot trick.. y.ourname@gmail.com = yourname@gmail.com.
  • rendall 10mo ago
    > making another random email youremail+anystring@gmail.com will always redirect to youremail@gmail.com Before making a random email address, try using youremail+f1@gmail.com or something similar.
    • throwawayffffas 10mo ago
      Also any dot in your email is ignored by gmail. a.b.c@gmail.com is equivalent to abc@gmail.com. You can try using your.email@gmail.com.
  • xoa 10mo ago
    It sounds like you unfortunately have gotten yourself kinda stuck, but I very much sympathize. I too have an account dating back to iTools, and for a long time it was a major frustration that I was stuck with that original email address as unchangeable for the Apple ID, unlike newer accounts. However, some time in the last, I dunno 3-5 years maybe? I can't remember now the exact time I noticed, but after over a decade of requests and fading hope Apple actually did allow me to change the email address for that Apple ID, which I shifted to my own domain. So for anyone else who hasn't checked in a long time, worth noting situation might be marginally better now. Re: "mac.com isn't doing email anymore", all the original mac.com email addresses still work fine. Apple has played around with various domains (mac.com/me.com/icloud.com) over their decades of bumbling with online services but they made them all interchangeable for older users, mails to the original @mac.com emails still go through. Even originally made aliases (they allowed 5 with iTools) still work. Not sure what your issue was on that one. Finally yeah, ""security"" questions are one of those horrible legacy anti-patterns that I will cheer to see finally be dead and buried. If you try to answer them honestly probably anyone can learn it with a bit of online searching, if you go for more obscure stuff they're easy to forget defeating the purpose. It's really best just to treat them as extra passwords, use random alphanumeric values and keep them in your password manager same as the password. Apple has also fumbled around with recovery over the years, at one point you had options to have a manual recovery key you could save but I think that's dead and can't set it up after already forgetting. Maybe if you go in person to a store with physical ID and evidence, if you had payment associated with the account and have that credit card for example that might do it. If you have nothing of value tied to the account though probably no reason not to just abandon it.
• baby 10mo ago
  If Apple engineers read this: I can't sign in into my iCloud account from my android phone, it just doesn't work, meaning I can't manage my subscription like HBO now that I switched to an android phone. PS: My plan is to wait for Apple to release a folding iPhone to move back!
  • geekologist 10mo ago
    That reads as rewarding them for taking your account hostage
  • stepquiet 10mo ago
    You can manage Apple subscriptions using your web browser (no Mac/iPhone needed). The subscription management page is: https://account.apple.com/account/manage/section/subscriptions https://account.apple.com/account/manage/section/subscriptio...
• Beijinger 10mo ago
  Since your money is gone, I would file a complaint here: ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission): The primary enforcer of gift card laws, ensuring businesses comply with the three-year minimum expiry, clear terms, and fair practices.
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    Absolutely, but that doesn't solve my immediate issue of my devices and accounts, but of course I will do that.
    • Beijinger 10mo ago
      "Beat the Grass to Startle the Snake" (打草惊蛇) You would be better off in the US. Trust me, nothing creates bigger fuzz than complaining to financial authorities.
      • brnt 10mo ago
        From the fire into the frying pan.
    • b112 10mo ago
      There are escalative methods to employ in such situations. In many legal jurisdictions, a 'demand letter' holds weight. These can be served by courier, with proof of delivery as valid. One aspect of such a letter is a hard, specific time by which you will start legal action, along with associated additional costs. You have two paths after the letter. The first is small claims court, or normal court. In many places, small claims court does not allow lawyers, and the judge will even have to explain any confusing terms. Which means the playing is leveled, including reduced or no disclosure requirements, and legal cost assignments. Where I am, it's $100 to file. The goal is to force a fix, at threat of legal consequences. I am sending an email.
    • inkyoto 10mo ago
      It appears that the only way to reach Apple Customer Relations is by way of writing a formal letter to: Apple Pty Ltd, PO Box A2629, Sydney South NSW 1235
• IlikeKitties 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    I would like to think you're wrong, but if they fix this, you're possibly right. My career is built on Apple technologies. I don't love that I'm captured by a vendor, but I have a lot of knowledge, and building to that level elsewhere is hard. I just want to keep using my stuff, and getting on with the fun things I get to work on. I don't have a strong attachment to Apple, I have a strong attachment to the familiar productivity I normally have.
    • IlikeKitties 10mo ago
      Even if you helped and this is fixed, consider the privileged situation you are in to even get this fixed. Most "normal" people would be doomed to lose their entire digital life. Evangelizing for a Megacorp is dooming more people into willing incompetence and dependency. Reconsider at least that part. You can work with and use their products (as I do at work with the GSuite or AWS) but I will never recommend or evangelize for them or rely on them with things I care about.
      • parisidau 10mo ago
        Totally agree.
  • jdlshore 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    • udev4096 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      • d1sxeyes 10mo ago
        Ahem.
• valleyer 10mo ago
  Send this in an e-mail to tcook@apple.com. He has a team that reads for stuff like this and can magically fix issues. I've had to do it before, also for a gift-card-related problem (different from yours), and I was contacted by a member of the Apple executive escalations team a couple days later.
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    It's been done, a few days ago. Nothing yet, but here's hoping.
    • valleyer 10mo ago
      Good. Don't be afraid to follow up if they drag their feet. Be respectful but persistent. I'm sorry this is happening to you. It's a shitty feeling.
    • udev4096 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      • nlh 10mo ago
        That's an unhelpful and unnecessarily nasty comment. Millions and millions and millions of people trust Apple. Whether you agree or not, to say they "deserve" something like this for doing what any normal person on this earth would do (and is marketed-at to do) is obnoxious.
        • userbinator 10mo ago
          The more you try to bury the truth, the worse it will be when uncovered.
        • trinsic2 10mo ago
          [flagged]
        • bigyabai 10mo ago
• superkuh 10mo ago
  Getting a special "notice me on social media (like HN)" fix won't actually fix the problem with using Apple's systems. It's just a temporary reprieve until some other aspect of their control of one's life breaks (by accident or indent).
• udev4096 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • snowe2010 10mo ago
    That applies for any device you buy, yes even if you plan on putting graphene on it. So you’re getting downvoted because your comments are pointless and disingenuous. Also, you can jailbreak an iphone so no it’s not bricked.
• sho 10mo ago
  Wow. This is a cautionary tale. I don't think I'd be as devastated as this poor chap, but as it grew I realize I've allowed my iCloud photo library to become a single copy. How are people handling this these days? If i wanted to ensure a full backup of everything on my iCloud to a NAS, what's the best way these days? Seems like they make it difficult by design..
  • stackghost 10mo ago
    I simply manually periodically download everything to disk/software raid. Really important/sentimental stuff like baby photos and videos I have on DVD with par2s.
  • ycombinete 10mo ago
    Sync to Dropbox -> Dropbox hourly & monthly backups to my NAS using Bvckup2. (One of these days I’ll setup my NAS to backup offsite fo a #3 backup). I know that others with Macbooks sync their whole library to their Macbook and then Time Machine to a NAS as their copy #2. Is this vulnerable to the problem in TFA?
  • mhammerc 10mo ago
    I run Arq Backup automatically in the background. It copy Photos, iCloud files and my mails once every days to S3 with incremental backups. It requires to have a full copy locally. Works great! It is not hard to configure once, with the proper folders and settings.
    • sho 10mo ago
      > It requires to have a full copy locally. yeah that's the thing. When my iPhotos library exceeded 1TB I lost the ability to store the full local copies. Since then, iCloud itself has been the sole source. Looks like there's some decent, reasonably priced apps to handle this like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?... (no affiliation)
      • mh- 10mo ago
• croes 10mo ago
  > Support staff refused to tell me why the account was banned or provide specific details on the decision. That‘s always the most kafkaesque part of these problems and should be illegal
  • b112 10mo ago
    The broken logic is that it will expose why the account was flagged, and thus, allow 'bad actors' to better navigate and bypass such flags. Of course, this is absolutely silly and beyond absurd, for bad actors share information of forums, can deduce fairly easily, and even have help from people on staff. Such actors typically know about detection and flagging methods within days of implementation. There's literally zero benefit to secrecy. None. Security through obscurity can be a beneficial additional layer, but it simply never helps here. We really should pass a law requiring full disclosure of the precise method of banning. I can even see a 'trial' period, where accounts activated (and used!) for 3 months receive this benefit, but new accounts, or new + dormant accounts do not. This should likely be coupled with mandated full refunds of phones or computers, as an example. Note that this isn't a 'free' account we're talking about here. An Apple account, or a Google account is required to use an iphone or pixel in its default config, and all the features it entails. These accounts aren't free, they're part of purchase cost, and core-required. (Even if it's a, for example, Samsung phone? It comes pre-installed, with uninstallable Google Play cruft, as part of an agreement with Samsung. Same conditions need apply here)
    • Rikudou 10mo ago
      You can use an Android phone without a Google account.
      • b112 10mo ago
        For the average person, including buying apps, this simply isn't a reality. And Google will now be throwing up massive "OMG! You're going to install an app that isn't from the Play Store?!" warnings to anyone that tries, including requiring some degree of technical skill to do so. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908938 You can nitpick this, but the truth is my comments are about the average user, and from that perspective, factually accurate.
• x3sphere 10mo ago
  It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale? It would make more sense if they just locked the person out of redeeming gift cards or something, not the entire account. But reading horror stories like this is is why I only use the very bare minimum of any of these cloud services. Keep local copies of everything. For developer accounts, I always create them under a separate email so they're not tied to my personal. At least it can minimize the damage somewhat. It sucks that I have to take all these extra precautions though. It's definitely made me develop a do not trust any big corp mindset.
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  • breppp 10mo ago
    > It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale? If I need to guess, gift cards are sold online in money laundering schemes, also on some platforms they are used to let you buy apps from a lower priced country
  • cemoktra 10mo ago
    Well from my view as European working in finance. Handling money for customers to pay (buy apps) likely requires an e money license (not sure about other states). And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not. So disabling the account might be due to regulations required for the e money license. Of course Support should be able to resolve this if proves are given
    • scoot 10mo ago
      That doesn't explain why an entire account is shut down, rather than just use of gift cards. Hammer to crack an egg, and just plain lazy/incompetent
      • BaconVonPork 10mo ago
        It is probably lazy in the sense that they would need more lawyers and more careful ToS. Defending their ability to shut anyone off completely is a lot easier than dealing with lawsuits from customers denied X, denied Y, denied Z in regions A,B,C..
• whatever1 10mo ago
  Shouldn't these huge platform guys be mandated to offer data transfer-out service?
  • elondaits 10mo ago
    My thought. There should be a mandate to allow downloading all data on account closure from any service.
• userbinator 10mo ago
  To paraphrase an old saying: Live by Big Tech, die by Big Tech. After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer I've heard others say this (and was a "loyal advocate" of Windows for around 2 decades myself), but the reality is they simply do not care. You are merely a single user out of several billion. Many of the reps I’ve spoken to have suggested strange things That almost sounds like some sort of AI, not a human. But if I were in your situation I'd be inclined to print out that response as evidence, and then actually go there physically to see what happens.
  • trinsic2 10mo ago
    This is why I don't use an os that depends on cloud functionality built into the os for much of its fuctionality. It's really stupid IMHO to depend on a closed system like this to store data.
    • KPGv2 10mo ago
      > This is why I don't use an os that depends on cloud functionality built into the os for much of its fuctionality. macOS doesn't require this. My Apple account has a handful of apps purchased over the years, and that's it. I could've bought them directly from the vendors, but the store makes it easier to update.
      • pavel_lishin 10mo ago
        Does iOS?
        • lapcat 10mo ago
          The operating system does not. The App Store does, and unfortunately on iOS the App Store is the only way to download apps not included with the OS.
          • KPGv2 9mo ago
            The second sentence is not true in the EU and Japan, two regions that actually care about end users.
• marcalc 10mo ago
  Seems like we need to popularise proper guides on how to convert our iCloud storage using self-hosted solutions. It's a shame though.
• manav 10mo ago
  Last time I had this problem, I got it fixed after applying for and accepting a job at Apple.
  • bl4kers 10mo ago
    At what point during the process was the issue raised? Was it received well?
• compounding_it 10mo ago
  My 2 cents: There was a time when I accidentally deleted some photos of which I had only one copy. I blamed myself for being stupid not having a copy but also money was tight for additional drives. Then there is this: depending on a service provider and then blaming them for something like this. The problem is that now you are losing trust in service providers (of which there should be little to begin with) and on top of that you are also blaming yourself for depending on them. However you have to create a trust model where your fault allows you to have a service helping you with it while a fault at the service provider will allow you to restore data from your end too, getting the best of both worlds. MacOS and Windows / Google with always logged in systems that lock you out completely at their will is an example of how your devices are not owned by you to begin with and then trusting them with your data as well means your digital life is basically owned by them completely. Now imagine that there are no humans to solve this but endless LLM bots that respond with generic responses because the LLM has never seen a problem like this. I want to point out that owning your data and hardware is really important if you depend on it and your business especially does.
  • ryanjshaw 10mo ago
    I think this argument conflates “what’s possible” with “what’s reasonable”. In a complex modern society, we can’t all be expected to have backup plans to the Nth degree. Is it possible to bore for my own water supply, install solar+inverter/battery backup for electricity, get a medical degree to treat my own wounds? Sure but most would say it’s not reasonable. It’s why we have regulations and ombudsmans for healthcare, transport, finance, water provider, electricity providers, communications providers etc. Oddly missing from that list is critical technical infrastructure providers like Microsoft, Apple and Google.
    • compounding_it 10mo ago
      > However you have to create a trust model where your fault allows you to have a service helping you with it while a fault at the service provider will allow you to restore data from your end too, getting the best of both worlds. This is why I suggested to have a dual model. Leveraging the cloud and services is really a good choice as long as you have backup systems running independently as well. Your backups may not be as powerful and full fledged as the main provider but in case of emergencies like these, you still own your data and hardware and don’t panic. In this example a weekly backup of iCloud to a drive connected to a pi with rsync could be a simple solution. 6tb is not even that much given that 500$ gift cards are being used by the author. The backup is not great but it is easy to see why it’s also necessary to own your data.
• SiteRelEnby 10mo ago
  Has it been 12 months again already? That's about how often one of these stories come up. I guess some people don't learn.
  • aurareturn 10mo ago
    Apple has over a billion users. Do you expect every single one of them to learn how to do backups, protect their purchase on iOS, etc.?
    • snowe2010 10mo ago
      Yeah literally the exact same thing can happen on android and windows. The solution is regulation, not ridiculous solutions like telling billions of people to back up their own stuff.
      • akho 10mo ago
        What's your proposed regulation?
        • bl4kers 10mo ago
          I would support legislation that enforces a right to data export for 6 months in human readable file formats, or a physical equivalent like spending a USB stick in the mail.
          • akho 10mo ago
            Quoting the op: > The Damage: > I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active “bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. (I assume these can be re-sold? They do mention that they can't sign out) > I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media. Should the "purchased" software and media be within the data export scope? > I don’t have a 6TB device to sync them to, even if I could. ...yeah. But let's say we limit ourselves to stored bits. How should the service identify the person asking for data export? Does your regulation imply government id registration for all internet services? Is that what you actually want? What if the service is e2ee? How do they deliver "human readable file formats"? Are we also banning e2ee? What do compliance requirements imply for people's ability to start competing services? You are proposing to replace a very tiny bit of personal responsibility (having backups) with a very intrusive, and highly consequential, legal mechanism. EDIT: Though I would, of course, support a requirement for these services to properly warn users (on the registration page, not buried in TOS small print), and provide thorough instructions for making backups to external storage connected to any of the devices they support.
• nuker 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • b112 10mo ago
    There are a few physical Google stores. They aren't really very helpful at anything, and even don't have phones in stock often. I went to one, wanted a Pixel Fold in the spring, and was told "we'll get one". Some guy left to do so, and 20 minutes later I just walked out. Just as with everything else, when Google does it, it's half-assed.
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    I live in Tasmania, a state of Australia that is 1) an island, and 2) has no Apple Stores.
    • eviks 10mo ago
      "and yet didn't bother to swim to the nearest Apple store"
  • Daneel_ 10mo ago
    Not everywhere has apple stores that you can “just walk in to”
  • cosmosgenius 10mo ago
    Android phones are not inherently linked to a google account, atleast not in the same way an iPhone is.
  • neya 10mo ago
    You decided to turn a plea for help into a fanboy war?
• SanjayMehta 10mo ago
  I've shared your post with a friend at Apple. In the past people have emailed Tim Cook directly - his email id is fairly easy to find. Edit: "I have escalated this through my many friends in WWDR and SRE at Apple, with no success." This doesn't bode well.
  • crena 10mo ago
    This comment should be among the top voted contributions to this submission for everyone to see. WWDR stands for World-Wide Developer Relations and SRE stands for Site Reliability Engineering.
  • bigyabai 10mo ago
    Mr. Fart warned us about this: https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177a406c775 https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177... One day the engineers will try their best to fix things, but get stopped by management satisfied by high-nines logic. If anyone is falling through the cracks, it's bad customer support. This bodes poorly indeed.
• reactordev 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    I have spoken verbally to multiple members of Apple's support teams. Apologies if that was unclear. I didn't record this calls, as they did not permit me to.
    • reactordev 10mo ago
      Then continue that. It’s definitely a fraud detection lockout due to probably the retailer not properly registering the gift cards or something similar. If you can’t iforgot.apple.com, then support is your only option. No one else has access. Only Apple Support. You have a case number, keep calling every 12 hours asking for an update.
    • noman-land 10mo ago
      You don't need their permission to record the call if they are recording the call already.
• byyoung3 10mo ago
  [flagged]
• Rikudou 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • cdmckay 10mo ago
    I would love to feel sorry, but seems you’re technically capable of preventing this (unlike most people), just chose “convenience.” Well, this is the downside of “convenience.” If you manage to recover your belongings, I hope you stop preaching around how living in a normal apartment in society is good and everyone should accept the risk of home invasion instead of living in an underground bunker with biometric access controls and armed security.
    • beeflet 10mo ago
      living in an apartment sucks for security. You can't really own a gun and practice castle doctrine. Your landlord has a key to your home and can lock you out at any time, or can go through your mail. There are other options like living in your own property, living in an RV, etc. that are better if you are worried about security. If I was living in an apartment, I wouldn't be stashing all of my money under my mattress. I wouldn't run a business out of my apartment such that I would lose all of my equipment if I got evicted. Similarly, I wouldn't do anything of importance on an apple computer. I wouldn't stash cryptocurrency on it, I wouldn't save my bank account details on it, I wouldn't run an important business that depends on their platforms. Because you're just renting and your lord can change the keys tomorrow.
      • graemep 10mo ago
        Where do you live? You are implicitly assuming a rented property. Where I live you can buy a flat. however, even assuming rented, its not that bad, atleast here in the UK. > our landlord has a key to your home and can lock you out at any time Illegal to do without notice and permission. You can change the locks as long as you change them back or pay for cost of doing so when you leave. > I wouldn't run a business out of my apartment such that I would lose all of my equipment if I got evicted. Eviction requires a legal process that takes months. > I wouldn't run an important business that depends on their platforms. That implies no one should develop software for Apple, MS or Google platforms.
• n2h4 10mo ago
  parisidau, I hope you get your account back. you can in the meantime, and for the future, try compartmentalizing services you use. the old saying of "all eggs in one basket" applies here as well. VPS, hard drives, etc. are cheap and keep you more in control of your own data than you're with big tech.
  • gorbachev 10mo ago
    How do you that with Apple hardware that requires an AppleID to operate? Is your advise to avoid all Apple hardware? Or buy backup hardware none of which will run MacOS / iOS, so you still couldn't access things like your Apple Developer account, or any shared documents?
    • duskdozer 10mo ago
      Are you not able to use them at all without an apple id? I have some older apple devices which I guess predate that
    • throwawayffffas 10mo ago
      Have no apple hardware. If you need apple hardware for work use a work email and account and never use it for anything else other than work. Always pay apple with a work credit card.
• hnthrowawy477 10mo ago
  This happened to me really early on when my original Apple ID had an invalid format, as it was an ID made prior to the current version of Apple ID everyone uses, and Apple refused to port what I owned to the ID that I was forced to generate to sign into my newer device. My old ID had software no longer available in App Store, so this wasn’t just a matter of needing to repurchase apps- they were taking away my ability to use applications I bought from them. Since then, I’ve been incredibly wary of losing my Apple ID. I have a lot of respect for Apple, but I would bet that it’s easier to deal with ID related problems for someone with Q level clearance in the U.S. government or even a non-existent Men In Black ID problem than to resolve a problem with an Apple ID. They probably would tell the almighty to get a new ID.
  • ThePowerOfFuet 10mo ago
    Far too late, but the solution was to change the identifier on your Apple ID from a username to an email address. Mine was the same, and that's all it took. Nothing was lost, as the account itself remained the same.
• td540 10mo ago
  Now that this is on the Hacker News front page, surely Apple will be escalating this and provide a general solution, no?
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    Let's hope so...
    • philistine 10mo ago
      It's Saturday. Executives might get phone calls to make it happen on a Sunday, but I wouldn't bet on it.
• sohrob 10mo ago
  If Apple doesn't have the sense to reply to this in a sensible manner then that company is in far worse shape than I thought.
  • sitzkrieg 10mo ago
    lol prepare to be disappointed
• commandersaki 10mo ago
  Take it to your state or territory tribunal ASAP. You might be able to take it to the courts and get temporary injunctive relief.
• acqbu 10mo ago
  This kind of thing happens more often than people think. You trade convenience for blind trust and sometimes that trust gets revoked without warning. Whether it's Apple, Google or whoever’s "ecosystem" you live in if you don’t own your keys and data, you’re just a tenant who forgot the landlord doesn’t take calls.
• tiku 10mo ago
  I went back to an MacBook pro M5, after being away from Apple for a year or 5 (Lenovo etc). I tried to re-enable my apple account but I had to wait 5(!) days to change the password. I ended up making another account.
  • viktorcode 10mo ago
    It's a defence mechanism against account hijacking if someone has access to your phone number, linked to your account. Went through the same procedure to recover an account I haven't been using for a few years.
• TekMol 10mo ago
  As someone using Linux to build web applications, I wonder what about the Apple ecosystem could make it worth to have such a Damocles’ sword hanging over me my whole life. Am I missing something? My current perspective is that not only am I free of all the hassle that comes with building for a closed ecosystem, such as managing a developer account and using proprietary tools, it also comes with much harder distribution. I can put up a website with no wait time and everybody on planet earth can use it right away. So much nicer than having to go through all the hoops and limitations of an app store. Honest question: Am I missing something? What would I get in return if I invested all the work to build for iOS or Mac?
  • snowe2010 10mo ago
    And that website is hosted somewhere, you’re using several layers of network providers, the registrar has control over your domain, the copper in the ground most likely has an easement controlling access to it so your internet provider literally can just cut off access to you whenever they want, if you publish your apps to a registry the registry controls your apps as well. There are so many companies that control access to every part of your life. Your argument is meaningless because it applies to _everything_. A trustless society is not one that anyone should want to be a part of. Regulations exist for a reason.
    • ang_cire 10mo ago
      Not wanting centralization under one company does not equal advocating for "trustless society". All the things you mentioned (registrars, ISPs, registries, etc) have multiple alternative providers you can choose from. Get cut off from GCP, move to AWS. Get banned in Germany, VPS in Sweden. Domain registration revoked, get another domain. Lose your Apple ID, and you're locked out of the entire Apple ecosystem, permanently, period. Even if a US federal court ordered that you could never again legally access the internet, that would only be valid within the US, and you could legally and freely access it by going to any other country. So in fact, rather than everything being equivalent to Apple's singular control, almost nothing is equivalent (really, only another company with a similarly closed ecosystem).
• larodi 10mo ago
  If this person with all his Apple-centric work cannot get personal support from Apple, well then perhaps no one does get it anyway.
  • deaux 10mo ago
    No way, if you have close ties to the Party, you'll get it, guaranteed.
• 14 10mo ago
  I hope you get it back. I always had the mindset that if I am a paying customer that this type of situation is very unlikely. But you are literally a massive paying customer and you got hit. The truth is you are just a nobody even as a customer who has dumped thousands of dollars as a loyal supporter. Showing up on HackerNews is a positive thing as the only way to get any traction in these situations is either be famous and complain or your story going viral and someone with power seeing your plea. I worried about only having a physical copy of my family photos so started paying apple for some storage. This type of event worries me. Good reminder to have multiple backup solutions.
  • alex1138 10mo ago
    Oh yeah and it absolutely does away with bullshit of "If you're not paying you're the product" I'm sorry it doesn't work when these services, even free, are monopolies You can have free services, you can have paid services but they ALL absolutely have to be answerable to the consumer
• kstenerud 10mo ago
  These online storage services like iCloud and Google Drive are, and always have been, a trap. They feel convenient, but they will keep changing their TOS to disadvantage you further and further as time goes on. Everything you upload is scanned into their AI to create a profile about you that they can then exploit (once again, to your disadvantage). They do it despite regulations against it (Who's to say what they're complying with, deep in their complex data centers? Who's gonna even check? And how?) This is why online services that take control of your data are such gold mines (subscription fees, analytics, profiling, etc). They get you coming and going. And of course, the account terminations: The earthquakes and "natural disasters" of the online world that destroy lives with no consequence or care. When your data is not in your sole possession, you own nothing.
• gigatexal 10mo ago
  Come on Apple do the right thing here. Surely there are some people from Apple reading this in the comments
• alex1138 10mo ago
  I always knew Google and Facebook did this (let's make Oculus a Facebook requirement! oops now you're banned - genius, brilliant, all the people working there have an IQ of 600) but now the trifecta is complete Seriously can we fucking have any products that work, in the 21st century Or is the answer just "lol automation is cheaper"
• otterley 10mo ago
  Out of curiosity, why did you buy and redeem such a large gift card instead of paying directly? And was this a form of payment that was unusual in light of your account history?
  • parisidau 10mo ago
    I prefer to keep it topped up like that. It's been the same for 20 years.
    • wahnfrieden 10mo ago
      These retailers have a problem with gift card fraud.
    • otterley 10mo ago
      What’s the basis for your preference?
  • matwood 10mo ago
    I have similar questions. At the scale Apple operates I'm sure mistakes are made all the time, but often it feels like there is something missing when these types of stories pop up. I have had support from Apple before and they went out of their way to help me, supervisors doing research and calling me back for example. How Apple stonewalled here makes it seem like it was more than a single large gift card that caused the issue.
  • elondaits 10mo ago
    Back in 2015, I traveled to the US and wanted to buy a Macbook Pro at the Apple Store. The configuration I wanted wasn’t available in Apple Stores, and I couldn’t buy it online because at that point there was some limitation in the online store like they only took US credit cards, or something. At the Apple Store, the employees suggestion (a more senior one, who was consulted) was to buy a gift card for the computer’s cost (~$1500) and pay at the online store with that. I didn’t do it because buying “virtual stuff” for that amount seemed crazy (this was a huge amount of money for me, at the time).
  • 10mo ago
• 29athrowaway 10mo ago
  Richard Stallman warned us about this.
  • sitzkrieg 10mo ago
    those who laughed at him are waxing poetic about local backups at the moment
    • 29athrowaway 10mo ago
      Well, there are funny things about the guy, such as the video where he eats something from his foot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
• elric 10mo ago
  This seems to happen quite often. Not just with Apple, but also with Google. In spite of this obviously insane behaviour, EU governments want to rely on Apple and Google for smartphone-based electronic government IDs.
• sangeeth96 10mo ago
  This just makes me extremely concerned for the iCloud transition I’ve been making. It shouldn’t be this easy to perform a user-disruptive action from the support/ops side. I would think they’d have visibility to some sort of “reputation” metric, given the age/purchase history etc even if anonymized. I can understand this happening if it was a freshly created account topped up with a sus gift card but it’s unacceptable that the first action is to completely block an account with history. Even more concerning is the nonchalant support response to “go create a new one” with emojis. C’mon Apple — this is just a terrible way to respond to this situation.
  • markus_zhang 10mo ago
    A lot of fraud bans are just automated in my company. Apple probably outsources Customer service to the lowest salary places they could dump it to, and call it a day.
• willaaam 10mo ago
  I'm not the biggest advocate of the EU DMA, but account and device access is one item we should actually be regulating very heavily, where potential penalties for (suspected) abuse or incompliance must be much more granular than full-on account bans. It's hard to believe EU governments are actually considering mandating iOS and Android as gateways to access government services. It's a level of ignorance that's unfathomable. This story is also exactly why I invest precious time running a Linux machine in the basement that rclones my cloud drives locally, as well as having full local copies of my webmail contents.
  • Rikudou 10mo ago
    "I'm not a fan of regulating extremely huge companies, except for the way I'd regulate them."
    • nehal3m 10mo ago
      People make exceptions sometimes, what’s your point?
    • willaaam 10mo ago
      We must have regulation, and I support that fully. It also seems healthy to me to have an independent view on the specifics of said regulations. I mostly agree with the vision and direction of the DMA, but in my opinion it lacks specificity and clear unacceptable boundaries. That lack of specificity, to me, is why Apple has been able to implement malicious compliance. At the same time the lack of specifics risks companies leaving the EU market in its entirety due to regulatory unclarity with high fines.
      • lukeschlather 10mo ago
        There's a difference between malicious compliance and noncompliance. The EU has generally ruled that the lack of specificity you allude to does not exist; Apple has misinterpreted things that provide specific requirements to mean something other than what they legally mean. Fines have been levied and it seems that the situation has not yet been resolved; the fines will likely grow if Apple doesn't comply. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_3433 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
• znpy 10mo ago
  "After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer" I know this might sound cynical... But the author should really understand that Apple gives less than zero fcks about them. Apple is known (and, weirdly, loved) for being tyrannical in this sense. Apple is known for their "my way or the highway" approach to anything, without much explanation and with self-attributed "we're always right" attitude. > The Damage: I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active “bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media. And that's why people complain about Apple's walled garden. Given the size of the damage I'd look into getting a lawyer involved, and possibly try and get Apple to court (in coerce them into being reasonable). Frankly, I'm taking note of the archived page (https://archive.is/jrsLV https://archive.is/jrsLV) that I will reference to anybody that will ask why not to trust Apple in the future. Note that Google is also known for having a similar approach (there is no way to get support if something like this happens UNLESS you happen to know somebody inside google). Amazon on the other hand has made customer support one of its defining traits. Btw if you are doing any decent amount of tech stuff, you should REALLY get off walled gardens and at the very least have an on-premise backup solution (an off-the-shelf nas with spinning disks could be a good starter solution).
• GaryBluto 10mo ago
  This kind of Kafkaesque behaviour is what I've come to expect from any kind of online services. It's also why I won't use anything that cannot be setup offline.
• RASBR89 10mo ago
  Email Tim Cook (serious)
• Dilettante_ 10mo ago
  The emojis in the support chat are insane.
  • wiether 10mo ago
    Why in the hell were they using "relieved face" after telling OP to say goodbye to their 20yo account and create a new one to "solve" the issue? It makes me so mad, that's insane! https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f60c https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f60c
  • wiseowise 10mo ago
    "I've lost 25k+, my account and my documents" "I understand, relieved face" Literal psychopath reply.
• kevin061 10mo ago
  This is why I self host my blog. My email. This is why i try to stay away from the convenience of big tech. It is not the first time this happens and it will not be the last.
• concinds 10mo ago
  Apple clearly has a problem. In recent months there have been a number of reports online of people getting locked out of their Apple ID/iCloud, the appeal getting denied, and Apple refusing to disclose why or reverse it. Generally those reports don’t relate to gift cards or developer accounts.
  • bwfan123 10mo ago
    My father passed many moons ago, and the family wanted access to his icloud account and they did not have the password. This was a huge struggle. Finally, after weeks, we were able to reset the password, but only because we had access to the email he used. In retrospect, perhaps it is a good thing that Apple restricts access like this for privacy and security. But in this digital age there should be other mechanisms in scenarios like this. What if i wake up from a coma, and forgot all my passwords and have not recorded them physically anywhere ?
    • a-ogilvie 10mo ago
      What's the difference between amnesiac you and regular me? If you can regain access to your account without knowing some information about it, so can I.
• kuon 10mo ago
  I treat apple ID and google ID like throwaway accounts. I would never trust anything valuable to either. The problem is that it is very hard for "usual people" to do that. I will also never have an electronic ID. We (Switzerland) were dumb enough to vote yes for it but we are giving away our freedoms eventually. We need regulations to ensure vendor cannot lock in users and cannot threaten them. Everything should work like if you have your own domain and use email. If your provider go nuts, move your hosting and change your MX and point your local copy to it. This should not be reserved to some nerd like me, it should be an universal right. It is already late, but it can be reversed. We need for more sotires like this one to errupt, so people understand.
  • seszett 10mo ago
    > I will also never have an electronic ID. We (Switzerland) were dumb enough to vote yes for it but we are giving away our freedoms eventually. What's the link with the rest though? Your government already knows you, whether your id has your information printed with ink or stored on a chip. Belgium has had electronic id for decades now and I fail to see how it has taken away any freedom, but it has enabled people to get their official documents online without having to make appointments in person in most cases.
    • jeroenhd 10mo ago
      I think the fear many people have is that digital ID will be required for non-government services as well. I can easily see that happen in the USA and Switzerland is the kind of weird that may also let that sort of thing happen. With things like age verification becoming mandatory just about everywhere and actual privacy-conscious digital age verification being very difficult, there's definitely a risk towards abuse and badly designed authorization mechanisms (although the EU's open source backend and frontends should make it easy for other countries if they do actually care about privacy).
      • nullfield 10mo ago
        The kinds of things you want here, and that I think we all do, are hard. Yes, ideally a trusted intermediary would do something like… read your digital ID (which stiLL doesn’t guarantee it’s you providing it, up to a point), examine a birthdate, and sign an attestation to a liquor store that “this user is 21 or older” without you ever having to fork over your name, address, or biometric details. The will to enforce such measures, at least in the US, seems low.
• stogot 10mo ago
  I also got locked out of my Apple ID several years ago. I have the password but still can’t access it. I had to make a new one
• notthetup 10mo ago
  Sounds like something triggered a suspicious activity report. Not sure if it also applies to the likes of Apple but they’re forbidden from revealing any information about what caused it, etc with the customer or anyone.
• hagbard_c 10mo ago
  While I can't help with extricating your data from the fruit factory's claws I do have a suggestion what to do next: get a 10-foot or 3 m pole and use it to distance yourself from them in the future. Self-host your data if possible, find a friend you trust who already self-hosts and see if you can hitch a ride, use some commercial service if necessary but don't allow yourself to get trapped within an 'ecosystem' again. If a company makes it extra hard to use things outside of their own control you should understand that they're not doing this for their users but to remain in control and maximise their chances of extracting as much from their captives as possible. Don´t check in to Hotel Cupertino or soon you'll be singing along: Mirrors on the ceiling The pink champagne on ice, and she said "We are all just prisoners here Of our own device" And in the master's chambers They gathered for the feast They stab it with their steely knives But they just can't kill the beast Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before "Relax," said the night man "We are programmed to receive You can check out any time you like But you can never leave"
• ColinWright 10mo ago
  I used to have an eBay account, and at some point, despite not having used it for a year or so, I got an email saying I was permanently banned from eBay. No appeal, no reasons given, no possible way to create another account. Just. Banned. The companies need to be big enough to provide the amazing services they do, but once they are large enough they will never care about individuals. My internal model of large companies is that they are intelligent, psychopathic aliens. The people in them are like cells in our body, important for the function, but with no agency, and they are not who you are dealing with. You're dealing with the company, and it's an inhuman, psychopathic alien.
  • halapro 10mo ago
    PayPal permanently blocked my account and all of its connected cards and bank accounts after I sent them my passport for some verification (I don't remember why). It was because a lifetime ago I had opened my PayPal account as a minor.
• digiconfucius 10mo ago
  This is a good post and I wish all the best to the author that someone from Apple can help resolve this. I will personally never use iCloud ever again because of this.
• celpgoescheeew 10mo ago
  I hope he learns, does backups and switches to hardware without walled garden baked in, without the company being the real owner of your belongings.
  • jfoster 10mo ago
    It's really difficult to give up the convenience of cloud-based accounts. It would be nice for regulators to step up and protect consumers when it comes to this kind of thing.
• frigg 10mo ago
  What I've learned from all these disaster stories: have backups for everythig. I have an iCloud+ subscription but also a OneDrive subscription, photos are sync'ed to both storages. On gmail, I set up fwd for all emails to another email address (non-Google related) just in case. Of course you can't do this for every service but do it for the ones you can. On a meta note, Fuck Apple, I'm so glad I didn't pursue an iOS developer career 10 years ago.
• foobarkey 10mo ago
  Just talk to a lawyer, have the lawyer send a letter, there is no need to bang head against CS for escalation
  • halapro 10mo ago
    That "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I'm not confident that this would prevent data loss and that it would act in a reasonable time scale.
    • foobarkey 10mo ago
      Not necessarily, CS is just following some AML script here and will not deviate :)
• neop1x 10mo ago
  This happened to me as well with a secondary iCloud account, and I still have no idea what triggered the ban. Apple support said they couldn't reverse it. The account was on an old iPhone, and after the ban, it became impossible to log out, rendering the device e-waste overnight. I at least didn't have any valuable data in icloud. But that experience prompted me to stop using Apple products or any other device that requires an online account to function. Fortunately, since recent AMD APUs are quite capable, I sold my MacBook M2 Max and have happily returned to using x86_64 Linux. No more Apple in my life, ever.
• tamimio 10mo ago
  That emoji in the last pic felt like passive aggressiveness. I don’t have anything to say but it’s why I never put my eggs in one basket, and essential stuff are always backed up, but if your job is developing in an apple eco system and this scenario happens, it’s basically like getting fired and banned from working ever again!
• fmajid 10mo ago
  Wen thinking about risks from depending on the cloud, people fixate on the risk of losing data, when this kind of denial of access is a much more likely occurrence. I've started on my de-appleification plan in earnest this year: https://blog.majid.info/quit-apple/ https://blog.majid.info/quit-apple/
• bjt12345 10mo ago
  The OP is Australian and I've been recently reading of this scam that they may have fell victim of: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/937339 https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/937339
• fhub 10mo ago
  Here is how the gift card scam works (in Australia) [Quote] Yes they do still get activated at the checkout. But when you go to redeem, the code is missing the last digit or two so it doesn't work. People take the unactivated gift card, tamper with it to get inside carefully so it's not detectable, scratch and get the code, remove the last digit or two, replace the scratch off layer, put the unactivated gift card back on the shelf. Then after you activate the gift card at the checkout, they redeem it. [/Quote] From this discussion https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/937339 https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/937339
  • bombcar 10mo ago
    This is why Target doesn't have the activation code on their gift cards anymore, you have to have it added with a sticker when it is being activated now, and then scratch it off.
  • CamperBob2 10mo ago
    How does the scammer know when the card is activated? Do they just leave a script running, trying over and over to redeem the card until it works?
    • RyanShook 10mo ago
      Yes, I think they just keep retrying the cards on a regular basis.
      • xigoi 10mo ago
        Surely the company could trivially detect that?
        • jama211 10mo ago
          They try, but a combination of multiple layers of work arounds used by the attackers, and a strong desire not to false positive legitimate voucher buyers means there’s always a way.
• hugodan 10mo ago
  “I never thought leopards would eat my face,”
• amelius 10mo ago
  Apple is no better than other Big Corps out there.
• guayusa 10mo ago
  True nightmare :( hope to get resolved
• lsands 10mo ago
  I imagine that every "should have known better" respondent on this thread has internalized their abuse. Why in the world do we let tech companies adjudicate our service relations?
  • duskdozer 10mo ago
    It's more of an 'is' thing rather than an 'ought'
• jmpman 10mo ago
  My son was just scammed out of $1000 using some gift card scam. Typically these gift cards cannot be revoked once issued and anyone using the gift cards (like the people who scammed my son) would be able to reap the rewards without any consequences. I’m hopeful that Apple has found a way to track fraudulent Apple Gift cards and are now locking people’s Apple ID who use them. I suspect there’s more to the story than is being shared. What’s the provenance of the original gift card? Could it have been obtained through some not 100% above board means?
  • donbox 10mo ago
    The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale)
    • jmpman 10mo ago
      Did the original poster claim that he bought it from Woolworths, or did someone else buy it? I question if the poster obtained the gift card from some path where the original purchaser may have been scammed.
  • stephen_g 10mo ago
    From other comments explaining the kind of scams running at the moment, one possible scenario is that the card may have been taken, tampered with by a scammer (and the code recorded), and then placed back in the supermarket, with the scammer waiting until the OP purchased it and it was activated at the checkout. Perhaps between the scammer redeeming it and the poster then trying to redeem by entering the same code, the scammer’s account was flagged and then the OP’s account terminated along with the scammer for using the same code (even though the OP had done nothing wrong).
• epolanski 10mo ago
  I've been locked from my apple id for two *months*. Even though I: - had my recovery password - re-confirmed the email - re-confirmed my phone They just kept telling me "we'll contact you in two weeks", and kept not following. Then after the 4th recovery they sent me my recovery link on email (in any case weeks later). Worst of all? Their privacy and security they keep repeating like propaganda are beyond bogus. Sure, they de-logged me from all of my accounts, that I appreciate, but I had 0 issues accessing all of the contents on my hard drive if I was a thief with a simple script in recovery mode I could still access everything. Where's the security? Propaganda only non-technical normies believe and then repeat. I'm never ever buying Apple products ever in my life, I've got MBPs that my clients send me, but that's it.
  • pasc1878 10mo ago
    You encrpyt your hard drive - so that needs a password. So you need more than a simple script. But someone else having your hardware has always bveen a risk.
• Tiddles-the2nd 10mo ago
  This is disgusting and unconscionable conduct by Apple. Your whole life is locked into your account (digital data and physical devices), and they either don't care or don't have the processes in place to fix it. This is the kind of thing they need to be sued on a massive scale for to solve but it's too rare and too expensive for anything to ever happen to them for it.
• everyone 10mo ago
  Being a "loyal customer" to any giant corp is just making it extra convenient for them when they fuck you.. You need your stuff as files on a computer you actually control.
• akho 10mo ago
  It's hard to empathize with a technically-inclined person who uses cloud services for life-critical things. Let's just hope more people read the story.
  • onehair 10mo ago
    > It's hard to empathize I will empathize with you then and with your inability to empathize with the fact that people are different. Some people don't want to admit to themselves that this world is a wolf eat sheep world, trust that if you're a law abiding citizen, you shouldn't expect to be unfairly treated. Some people have more priorities and no time to dwell on harshness. They also would love it if everything just worked and you didn't need to spend 2 months of your life to configure things and always have to DIY everything. They're not like me and I accept that. I will never use Apple & Google Cloud for my personal things. But I will empathize for those who get unfair treatement from these companies. The whole meaning of a society is that we look out for each other, these big corpos have lost the plot, but I will not. It is supposed to be : I buy a service from you, I did nothing wrong, please treat me fairly and do actually deliver on what I paid for. That we don't trust them isn't how it's supposed to be, I wish I didn't have to do all of these things I do to keep away from big corpos, but this isn't how it is supposed to be. We're supposed to have the ability to trust each other in a society.
    • akho 10mo ago
      I qualified with "technically-inclined". You can't avoid seeing stories like this (about Apple and Google) on a monthly basis if you read tech websites. It is a known risk, which needs to be managed. Failing to manage it to this extent, while also writing tech books, is just baffling. Apple is clearly in the wrong, and I'm certain that there are thousands of similar cases that are less public. The author is one of the best-positioned people to know and understand that. I'm sure they'll also get their account back, unlike many others. (I can empathize with the difficult decision they'll face after that: do they continue to promote Apple, or try to reinvent their career somehow?) "Looking out for each other", in this case, implies telling the people you care about to have backups, and helping them set up. I do that, a lot. I'd try to also help with this plea, if I had any pull with Apple. I don't understand the sections of your comment with the word "supposed" in them. Supposed by who, and on what basis? What paid-for service are Apple not delivering? I assume they don't charge the author anymore.
• hnarn 10mo ago
  While I understand the attraction of doing so, I’m not sure I like the implication in the post that the reason this needs to be reviewed is because of how loyal of a customer this person is, or the fact that they have written books on developing for Apple devices.
• SuperNinKenDo 10mo ago
  This person has read literally dozens of stories just like theirs and just shrugged and said "couldn't be me". Well, it can always be you.
  • duskdozer 10mo ago
    Definitely a problem with a lot of developers, though I'm not sure if it's only a matter of having higher than average SES.
• notemaker 10mo ago
  My condolences. I don't have any advice, but you may be able to learn something from my very similar experience. https://skogsbrus.xyz/dont-put-all-your-apples-in-one-basket/ https://skogsbrus.xyz/dont-put-all-your-apples-in-one-basket...
  • throwawayffffas 10mo ago
    > I still love many of the products that Apple make... The Stockholm syndrome is real.
• helloworld4728 10mo ago
  If Apple has the ability to do this, why don’t they just brick all devices in Russia?
  • xigoi 10mo ago
    How would that help them make money?
  • throwawayffffas 10mo ago
    Because they like their markets in China and the EU
• xondono 10mo ago
  I’d expect this crap from Google, but not Apple. If this doesn’t get fixed, I’m going to have to rethink a lot of my digital life, including my company’s.
• dariosalvi78 10mo ago
  Well, you keep literally selling your own life to one immense American corporation and that's how you are treated. Time to say bye to Apple and Google for good...
• jim180 10mo ago
  I do have an Apple ID, which was banned due to fraud and customer support couldn’t do anything about. The thing is, that account was just used for dev. things for the US company, which builds/sells software for the US federal government (among the other US entities). It would not be very wise to do fraud.
• soapdog 10mo ago
  Remember, companies get away with these over the top behaviours cause it costs them nothing to have one less customer. If this situation somehow escalates until they have to take action, they will already have made so much money that is not a blip. They don’t care. You as an individual customer means absolutely nothing.
• mmcnl 10mo ago
  Exactly for this reason I bought a NAS where I can backup all my photos that are normally saved directly into iCloud.
• elestor 10mo ago
  The emojis are so passive-aggressive it's actually crazy.
• novoreorx 10mo ago
  If I were the person at Apple in charge of this kind of matter, I would ignore this case, just as I do for other regular people. Everyone should be equally not cared for by Apple. That's how Apple sucks in a way I can accept myself still using their product.
  • nabla9 10mo ago
    Agreed. If the only way to get your digital property back is a public plea to your Lord, that's called feudalism. Everyone should be treated fairly, not only those who can get their public pleas heard.
    • novoreorx 10mo ago
      You just made it clear to me why I felt not resonated and a bit uncomfortable reading that article, despite I thought I should be. Because what I want to see is something straight like "fuck you Apple", not a begging and emphasis on how much the author has contributed to the megacorp.
      • nabla9 10mo ago
        "fuck you Apple" is not a correct response either. Bad Apple, good Apple, is just more of the same. Asking Lords to be benevolent is not what we should want. Just like landlord can't just lock you out of your house, with all your property inside, but has to go trough legal process, we need to have legislation and regulation for the same with digital property.
    • markus_zhang 10mo ago
      Feudalism never left. The only change is that the majority of the serfs don’t work on land anymore, and we have the freedoms o switch lords easily.
• xtiansimon 10mo ago
  Nightmare. The stories of online-only service failures are legion. And yet if you can get face to face support, even one person can do so much. The gap is infuriating. I didn’t notice, do you have a Brick and Mortar Apple Store you can visit? I can’t help thinking this as I read the post. Of course this is not a physical hardware issue. Where a store employee could just hand you, say, a new phone. This is on the level of getting a slot on Tim Cook’s day planner, though I imagine the person with the ability to fix this is an underling many levels down Cook on the org chart.
• darrmit 10mo ago
  This is horrible and a big reason why I refuse to go “all in” on Apple, Google, or Microsoft (among other reasons). Apple is the one I’m closest to given my hardware, though. Given how invested you are in the Apple ecosystem I can’t fathom why you would go get an Apple Gift Card from a store to do this kind of transaction, though. It wouldn’t even cross my mind to do it that way.
  • ntoskrnl_exe 10mo ago
    I can't wrap my head around that as well. Given OP's expertise and experience with technology, how was this option better than using a credit card. Obviously I'm not claiming it was OP's mistake, that wouldn't make me any better than the guy who was telling people "you're holding it wrong™".
  • quitit 10mo ago
    Yeah it seems odd, and if Apple won't tell him or do anything, it might be because they can't: such as circumstances of an active police investigation. We are obviously not going to get a fuller idea about this situation from a blog post, and while I won't assume that the author has done anything wrong, there have been similar stories in the past where the affected individual was deliberately withholding the whole, much more illegal, story. Presuming his innocence: What could have happened here is that the gift card he's purchased has been marked as part of a scam operation. Apple gift cards are frequently used for "tax bill" and "police fine" scams in Australia (where they are sold there is often signage informing people of that.) So potentially this person is accidentally roped into that. Also it's not entirely unheard of to purchase gift cards for long-time users (who would normally just use their linked credit card), as the cards are often sold in the retail space with a 10% discount, or can be redeemed as rewards through points/loyalty schemes. With all that said, at this point if he's not getting anywhere, he should approach a lawyer, as they'd be able to petition on his behalf (whether that is to Apple or to the state of Tasmania.)
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  • someNameIG 10mo ago
• iambateman 10mo ago
  My grandfather’s Apple account was blacklisted too but I was less sympathetic to him because he genuinely sends spam email from his personal account (it’s politically motivated). One day he was bricked from his accounts because he ran afoul of Apple’s ToS. The problem then was I couldn’t feel sure that he hadn’t actually done something which a reasonable person would say should result in account closure. Paris’s case is much more strange, because it feels more likely to be a false-positive. There is no legal right to have an account with Apple or Google, and I’m not sure I want there to be. But so much of our lives are built on these services and these stories erode our trust that the services themselves can handle the responsibility of adjudicating acceptable use. We need our digital accounts to be robust in the very long-term, even when there are bad actors who want to do all manner of bad things. And we need to feel confident that a properly empowered human reviewed the case and can articulate the reasons for a ban. When we charge a person with a crime, we tell them what the crime was and give them due process to fight it. I’m not sure I want the courts to decide these questions but we need some more due process when it comes to account termination.
  • tw04 10mo ago
    > There is no legal right to have an account with Apple or Google, and I’m not sure I want there to be. There shouldn’t be a legal right to an account, but there absolutely should be a legal right to sit down with someone from the company to plead your case, understand why the account was locked, and at least be given the opportunity to gather your things if they decide not give you a second chance. If you get evicted from an apartment they don’t just change the locks and keep all your stuff…
  • andy_ppp 10mo ago
    There should be a legal right to a clear explanation and a mechanism of appealing these decisions with an external organisation. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that they should be able to delete users this casually with everything that is tied to your devices. You could make it so costs for arbitration could be paid up front by the person appealing and then if the account deletion was deemed wrong the company refunds said user. Could probably apply to monetisation on YouTube that I see withdrawn for very dubious reasons too.
• pavel_lishin 10mo ago
  > I am not a casual user. I have literally written the book on Apple development (taking over the Learning Cocoa with Objective-C series, which Apple themselves used to write, for O’Reilly Media, and then 20+ books following that). I help run the longest-running Apple developer event not run by Apple themselves, /dev/world. I have effectively been an evangelist for this company’s technology for my entire professional life. We had an app on the App Store on Day 1 in every sense of the world. I am surprised that with such a pedigree, the author doesn't already have contacts at Apple they could reach out to for that personal touch.
  • amelius 10mo ago
    I am surprised that evangelists keep thinking they are safe from the evil of big corporations.
    • yreg 10mo ago
      There's no reason to presume that the author 'thinks' that.
      • AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
        “This isn’t just an email address; it is my core digital identity” If he doesn’t think like that, then why does he act like it?
        • evanelias 10mo ago
          [flagged]
          • lapcat 10mo ago
            > That sentence smells like AI writing, so who knows what the author actually thinks. The author has been a professional writer since long before LLMs were invented: https://hey.paris/books-and-events/books/ https://hey.paris/books-and-events/books/ LLMs were trained on books like the ones written by the author, which is why AI writing "smells" like professional writing. The reason that AI is notorious for using em dashes, for example, is that professional authors use em dashes, whereas amateur writers tend not to use em dashes. It's becoming absurd that we're now accusing professional writers of being AI.
• avazhi 10mo ago
  I upvoted this for visibility but if you put your entire digital life in the hands of any of these tech companies and store all your shit in the cloud with no local backups, you are at least as blameworthy as they are. I’m less surprised that Apple would do this than I am that somebody who is clearly tech savvy could be this stupid about tech.
• num42 10mo ago
  Off-topic and a stupid question: why does anything related to Apple attract so much attention on HN? As a newcomer, I assumed HN focused mostly on reverse engineering,retro computing, and deep technical topics.
  • Workaccount2 10mo ago
    Tech stopped being full of tech nerds when 10 weeks in a JavaScript boot camp and a few thousand lines of code in your personal GitHub would land you a $140k remote job. Maybe now we will start seeing a reversion to the people in it for the passion.
    • sph 10mo ago
      Imagine what tech will look like when you don't even need the 10 weeks in a boot camp, just a subscription to Claude.
  • markbnj 10mo ago
    I would not say your list is anything like complete, although those topics are often discussed here. Apple is a huge player in the general computing ecosystem, and probably a majority of front- and back-end developers these days work on macbooks, so it isn't surprising that the things they do resonate in this community.
  • waz0wski 10mo ago
    HN hasn't focused on those topics in a long time, they rarely are on the front page. Skip the top 20 articles and you'll start to see some interesting content instead of all the VC & AI drivel. Hackaday is a content aggregator site that usually has more content on these topics - https://hackaday.com https://hackaday.com Or there are still some good old blogs out there with RSS feeds http://www.righto.com/ http://www.righto.com/ http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/ http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/ https://blog.ret2.io/ https://blog.ret2.io/
  • rjakobsson 10mo ago
    Apple offers the most convenient computing experience available to mankind as of right now. That's why I care, at least. I love their products and services, but not so much when it fails (as in the authors case). That shit is scary.
• drcongo 10mo ago
  No idea if this has ever been tried, but a GDPR "subject access request" requires a company to hand over all the data they hold on you, which technically should include all your photos, media, messages and everything.
• Eriks 10mo ago
  As of data (photos, contacts, files etc.), you should have rights to request all that for download. GDPR etc that grants you that.
  • xigoi 10mo ago
    OP does not live in the EU.
• storus 10mo ago
  Disabling iCloud seems like a gift. I wish I could just get rid of it all without any subsequent nagging every time I update/upgrade macOS.
• insane_dreamer 10mo ago
  It's one thing to lock someone's account so they can't make payments or whatever. It's another altogether to lock them out of accessing their own documents / photos / etc. That's just 100% unacceptable regardless of what triggered it. And even if they did have a valid reason to lock your account, at the very least it should be, "you have 7 days to download / clear out your documents". Absolutely horrible black mark on Apple. I'll be buying an external HDD to download all my photos / iCloud docs to. I've been too trusting.
• kragen 10mo ago
  Probably worth reading Doctorow's "Scroogled": https://craphound.com/scroogled.html https://craphound.com/scroogled.html Centralization of power in unaccountable organizations has always been a recipe for disaster. I could suggest some slogans: "Apple. Not even once." "Friends don't let friends use Apple." But I think this is a problem that merits more than slogans.
• 8cvor6j844qw_d6 10mo ago
  Just curious if the account owner is still able to access their passkeys stored on their Apple device at the moment. Not too keen on passkeys without an easy way to backup. Same goes with sign in with Google and Apple.
  • a012 10mo ago
    Buy two Yubikeys and save your passkeys there if you would
  • insane_dreamer 10mo ago
    Do Yubikeys even work with iPhone? Besides, if the account is locked, how would that help? The issue isn't a forgotten passcode or passkey.
    • arianvanp 10mo ago
      Yes they work with iPhone
  • sergsoares 10mo ago
    Same doubt here, a disaster even bigger (Maybe in Mac ?) That is why I prefer OTP all the time, easier to backup and restore.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• Workaccount2 10mo ago
  Perhaps the most annoying thing about this, certainly after getting traction on HN, is that his account will be reinstated.... ...and then nothing. No sorry, no "here's what went wrong", no blog post to address the angry masses, no recognition, reconciliation, or reformation. Just things working again and silence.
• gorfian_robot 10mo ago
  google locked my sister's account for some reason and we spent months trying to get it unlocked. no luck. fuckers.
• ezfe 10mo ago
  Most cases we see here do only lock the media side of accounts. It’s concerning this blocked the entire account.
• quitit 10mo ago
  It sounds like the gift card # is included as part of a police investigation (as you already know scams often use gift cards as payment) - which would explain Apple's inability to help you or provide information (because they would be required by the state not to.) You should approach a lawyer to petition Apple and the Tasmanian police on your behalf.
• njarboe 10mo ago
  "Many of the reps I’ve spoken to have suggested strange things, one of the strangest was telling me that I could physically go to Apple’s Australian HQ at Level 3, 20 Martin Place, Sydney, and plead my case." This does not seem strange to me and could be a course of action. When I moved my domains off Google because of this type of "banned without recourse" possibility, I found a registrar that had a physical address, small office, and people listed on the company website (porkbun) so in the worse case I could fly to the office and straighten things out. No mention of even going to an Apple store. Maybe the nearest one is very far away from him?
• bonnaud_dowell 10mo ago
  A painful reminder that Apple's service is subject to terms. Speaking of which, the guy's .paris domain name may be next unless he is a resident of Ile-de-France etc.......
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• bonnaud_dowell 10mo ago
  A painful reminder that Apple's service is subject to terms. Incidentally, the guy's .paris domain name may be next unless you are a resident or have a business related to the region of of Ile-de-France
• tonymet 10mo ago
  I back up regularly using Google Takeout and similar tools, but I don’t think it’s fair to shame this author . Even if you have backups , your recent and essential content and credentials will be locked out . 1% of your content is the most important We all depend heavily on cloud storage and sso . Everything works fine until you are locked out . And using them isn’t fully voluntary. They are necessary for collaboration . You end up using what your team uses . You can try to be that “own cloud” snob but it only works if you live in a basement Every normal person has content in Google , iCloud , OneDrive , Dropbox and maybe more. That’s 4+ single points of failure You’re just not imaginative enough if you think you’re safe . OPs only recourse is an insider or a lawyer
  • rvnx 10mo ago
    Lot of arrogant people here who think they are safe and better than anybody and blame OP. It is totally normal in today’s world to depend on cloud services and reasonably difficult to do without it. In China: no WeChat you are practically dead. Here try to join meetings without account, try to send a message on WhatsApp without account, etc… a lot can go wrong very fast. What if you used your Apple account as SSO to other services ?
    • tonymet 10mo ago
      Very true. And account integrity check pointing is stochastic and more aggressive so at any time there are people being locked out . One of 20 of your services could lock you out tomorrow and that means you’re blocked from coworkers and family
      • IndianShitbombs 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        • tonymet 10mo ago
          So let me try to understand you. You have 200 friends on whatsapp and FB locks you out . Now you can start sending them letters ? And how do you get their number . WhatsApp,WeChat , messenger , telegram all use private addressing
• oidar 10mo ago
  This sucks Paris. What hope does the normal joe have to get a fair shake if you can't even get this resolved? The layers of click through contracts, opaque terms, LLM customer service, un-empowered customer service, and arbitration agreements make this a crazy relationship we get into with big tech. If we have a problem like this, we should be able to talk to a person at the company that can resolve this right without threatening a lawsuit. It's nuts. I'm curious about the apple's passwords app. Where you able to use it? What about passkeys?
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• francasso 10mo ago
  Companies like apple should be liable to pay many millions in damages for this kind of shit. The people should make it hurt so much for them that they think twice before doing it without having a clear and working appeal process where you are clearly explained what happened and guided through it.
• ivanjermakov 10mo ago
  How utterly indifferent one needs to be to have no "VIP" support line for cases like this. On the other hand, great learning case on putting eggs in one basket and on "own nothing and be happy".
• sebastianconcpt 10mo ago
  Only depend on platforms as redundancy. Never as primary source. Break that discipline and you are exposing yourself to this danger.
• sammy2255 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • peesem 10mo ago
    you're mad that they're acknowledging stolen land?
    • sammy2255 10mo ago
      Every nation in the world is on stolen land by that logic. This is pathetic virtue signalling
  • tanepiper 10mo ago
    Why? It's his website, he can put what he likes on it. Your rational is...?
• phyzome 10mo ago
  Pretty infuriating to see those chatbot responses. (The emoji -- and the particular choice of emoji -- were a very clear tell.)
• kombine 10mo ago
  Maybe events like this will be a wake up call to our community. Virtually everyone around me uses Apple everything - colleagues, friends, family. And they find it weird when I say I don't use Apple out of principle and I even have to justify it.
• zahirbmirza 10mo ago
  If local backups were not so hard... It is sometimes impossible to back up an iPhone to a computer; yet seamless to backup to iCloud... Infer what you will. I am skeptical of over reliance and dependance on Apple more than ever. Unfortunately, interoperability is something we can wish for rather than expect.
  • markus_zhang 10mo ago
    I dump photos and videos I want to preserve into a WeChat/Whatsapp chat and use their desktop apps to download to an external HD. It’s a bit of trouble but still easier than doing this natively in Android or Iphone.
• 1970-01-01 10mo ago
  The untapped answer is litigation. Call a lawyer and file against Apple. It may take several business days, and cost $$$$ but it will absolutely light a fire at Apple and get the attention of many-a-human. And if they ignore it, well, maybe a class action lawsuit awaits.
  • wpm 10mo ago
    My exact thoughts, if there is no number of email address you can call to get this sorted, that means the legal department’s number is. Even if in the T&Cs say Apple can do this, which it probably does, now they would have to prove it in front of a judge.
    • rvnx 10mo ago
      In… 5 years, and the prejudice won’t accumulate because your claims will still be based on 5 years ago :/
      • cyanmagenta 10mo ago
        Monetary damages generally accumulate during the pendency of litigation. Also, it seems unlikely that this would take 5 years to resolve—Apple would presumably just reactivate the account and argue the case is moot now. I mean, maybe they want to establish precedent here to avoid opening the floodgates to this type of litigation, but more likely they’d just settle this one out quickly and quietly and fight the issue when they had better facts. OP’s story is pretty persuasive.
        • nullfield 10mo ago
          Even a small claims filing in the US, which might have a $10k limit, does damage to Apple far enough above the effort it takes them to “just intelligently fix it” to make it worth their time. If Apple doesn’t show up, they’ll lose and the filer will get a default judgement, for which they hopefully asked/made the case for $10k. I’m sure they can arrange to have it enforced against a local Apple Store to seize not product, but operational working assets, if they’re creative a bit. If Apple has anyone competent in Legal they won’t let it get that far, though. Then again, if they do show up, they’ll pay a lawyer well more than an hour of time, probably by a lot, and still have to argue against a likely well-prepared person, with proof of purchase, etc., (legitimate) sob story of lost time, digital assets, and the like, and likely won’t endear themselves to the court. And of course for a business, an actual court filing (or arbitration if it gets forced on them, with competent counsel) could be even worse.
• nilus0sora 10mo ago
  There is part of me that sort of wishes this would happen to me. I wonder if getting locked out of my cloud identities + bricking all my devices would actually be a great blessing in disguise from the Machine?
• rsyring 10mo ago
  You may want to consider filling a small claims lawsuit against Apple for the maximum amount of damages your state permits in small claims. It's not really about winning the claim. It's about getting them to acknowledge you and hopefully resolve it before the court case comes up. That is, you want them to "settle" by restoring your account. IANAL and YMMV.
  • lynndotpy 10mo ago
    The OP is in Australia, but I'd like to add some advice which would apply in the US: Apple is one of the few organizations which does not use an arbitration clause, which means suing in court really is an option. (With the exception of some services like their credit card, but you can opt out of that more easily than any other arbitration clause I've seen.)
• idiotsecant 10mo ago
  The real, foundational problem here is that we have abandoned the principles that made the internet. We don't care about open protocols, we accept walled gardens. Every day those walls get a little higher until eventually someone wins and the only thing that exists is the garden. I don't know what the solution is, but I think part of it is deliberately divorcing yourself from the big players as much as you can, which isn't much for some people, and encouraging government efforts to break them up and pull down garden walls whenever the opportunity arises. This is what government is for even if we've forgotten it in some places.
• throwaway150 10mo ago
  Big tech giants locking unsuspecting users out of their digital lives is nothing new. What would it take for our society to stop relying on these closed, walled gardens for critical stuff? How many account lockouts must occur before we accept that digital life built on permission rather than ownership is inherently fragile?
• terminalbraid 10mo ago
  One lesson I'm taking away from this is never to buy or use Apple gift cards
• awestrom 10mo ago
  I had this happen to me once while traveling, and then by random chance I ran into a former Apple Store employee at a hostel. She told me to email Tim Cook directly (his email is entirely guessable). I did this and within a day or two my access was restored.
• loloquwowndueo 10mo ago
  hopefully he’ll get resolution by bringing his case to the “media”. Still, for someone who heavily presents the argument that he’s a professional writer and even says “I am asking for a human at Apple to review this case.” , I find it odd that he tries to make his case via an obviously ai-written post. I mean, isn't writing what you said you do for a living?
• shelled 10mo ago
  This is really sad that some people are in ways blaming it on the author. While I do advocate zero to almost zero usage of services by these OEMs or big corps, in today's world everything, or almost everything, is linked to your email and/or phone number and in turn with a computing device, which, for me, makes these OEMs essentially public service providers for a cost. Locking a user out literally casts that person out of today's society — communication, dating, groceries, transport, hell, in some cases maybe even health care and emergency services — you name it. So it's very ingenuous and unkind of us not to raise hell and shout for extreme accountability on these corps' part instead of reminding a victim of T&C and not having diversified the online services usage enough across providers. Any company or entity ought not to be allowed to wield power over our lives, like locking someone out arbitrarily, let alone via some asinine, half-baked algorithm.
• QuiEgo 10mo ago
  1. This is a total nightmare, the author has my deepest sympathy. 2. Last time there was a post where this happened to someone, I looked into what you can do if you're locked out of your Apple ID or Google Account. I know people will say "just self host", but all of the self-hosting solutions are not friendly to families or non-tech people. Telling my extended family to tailscale into my server to look at family photos from vacation is a total non-starter. All of the self-hosted solutions are also just way less smooth to use than the built-in integration iCloud or Google Drive gives with devices. That said, there are straightforward options to deal with this (at least the data part), if you plan ahead. The high level strategy is to setup backups that let you get _a copy_ of your data not tied to any login you don't control. It's a bummer to have to go through these hoops, but again pragmatically, I'm stuck using these services to participate in modern life. For Google Drive, you can rclone your data to a computer of your choice to get a copy of your data not tied to Google Account. It will even convert G-Suite files to Microsoft Office format, so you have a copy of the data offline. For Google Photos, I'm not aware of a great way to get the data - rclone only gets low quality copies of photos. I'm an Apple user, so I didn't dive too deep here, perhaps the HN hivemind knows. For iCloud and Apple Photos, you have a lot of options. You can use Parachute backup or the PhotoSync App to get a copy of your data not tied to your Apple ID. If you have a mac, you can also setup your mac to download everything offline, and do time machine backups - they are not tied to your Apple ID. I will also add Synology NASes have a super, super easy to setup way to do all of this stuff (HyperBackup plus Synology Photos app) that's borderline worth the cost of admission on it's own, even with Synology's recent turn to the dark side. If you have non-technical family, you should strongly consider pointing them in this direction, if you can use a smartphone you can probably get this working.
  • andreashaerter 10mo ago
    > All of the self-hosted solutions are also just way less smooth to use than the built-in integration iCloud or Google Drive gives with devices. The built-in integrations (iCloud, Google Drive) are smooth right up until you’re locked out or forced into changes you can't control. Obviously. There is a middle ground though: managed service providers (per-service). You don't have to self-host everything in your basement, and you don't have to hand your entire digital life to Google or Apple either.
• hopelite 10mo ago
  Does anyone know if in the USA you could simply use small claims court on every individual device and service to get likely default judgements against Apple and then when they are unlikely to pay up, get a judgement against Apple and make a big deal about strolling into a store or even HQ to take Cook’s own devices out of his office or maybe just seize his corporate jet and auction it off?
• cecek 10mo ago
  I never understand why people put all their important stuff in one company.
• ianberdin 10mo ago
  A while ago we fixed people by killing them. I see the same pattern with account banning.
• OhMeadhbh 10mo ago
  Yup. They did the same thing to me a few years back. Not sure why. Had to re-apply as a developer with a different email address. I don't use Apple products anymore.
• fmx 10mo ago
  There have been so many cases of Apple, Google, etc. doing this that it's hard to have any sympathy for them at this point. If it was some grandma who didn't know better that would be another story, but the author was surely aware - that Apple *can* always *just* disable their account - that Apple regularly *does* do that - that Apple does not care about them at all and they chose to bet their entire digital life on Apple's benevolence anyway. They lost that bet. We need more stories like this hitting the mainstream news until even a non-technical person's reaction to this is "well, what did you expect?"
• QuiEgo 10mo ago
  Could you do something like self hosting a MDM (say Fleet?) so you can kick the tainted Apple ID off your devices and get them back if this happens?
• bambax 10mo ago
  > It holds terabytes of family photos Why do people still do this, why??!? This is not an ignorant user! The author (and victim) has written several books about Apple tech, how do they not know that these "platforms" cannot be trusted with anything -- especially data that isn't backed up somewhere else! Companies don't care about people, and the bigger they are the more evil they behave. They need to be treated like hostile business partners because that's what they are. They're only after money and absolutely nothing else. This is not some radical leftist manifesto, it's the plain reality. And it's not new either. It's always been like this.
• Havoc 10mo ago
  The modern trend of useless error messages, in cloud and no good way to talk to a human is really insidious
• danfunk 10mo ago
  Same experience with Google. I was setting up SSO for a new web application and set off some AI flag on a sub domain for our company website. For 2 weeks every visitor saw a warning that out site was a phishing scam. Nightmare. With no recourse. No number to call. No person to talk to. No actual explanation of the error (I still don't know exactly what I got wrong). I just took it down, waited, and prayed.
• ei8ths 10mo ago
  I hope OP can get his account unlocked. This is a good reminder for everyone else, backup your cloud data to a local drive. But thats just one part, the social / email OAUTH side of things, phone accounts etc..., terrible situation. It should be easy enough to walk in a HQ / office and show credible ID and get your account unlocked.
• koksik202 10mo ago
  if you pay for service you should receive some guarantees it is your money, it is crazy that there is no cool-off period where you get banned like this even by mistake or by Apple deciding they do not want to offer a service anymore and allow you to take out your stuff before fully shutting down.
• andreashaerter 10mo ago
  I don't get the mostly black/white "Self-host" vs. "Mega-Corp" discussions as there is a middle ground: smaller managed service providers (even: per-service). You don't have to self-host everything in your basement, and you don't have to hand your entire digital life to Google or Apple either. Mail, CalDAV/CardDAV, Immich, Nextcloud, OpenCloud, OpenTalk, web hosting, Kubernetes, simple VMs.. whatever ... fully managed, run by local or independent providers or by the company behind projects, without Big Tech lock-in. If chosen wisely, you can migrate, take over, or bring it in-house when you want. Just spend a few bucks and do some company research. Same as you would when choosing craftsmen, lawyers or something else. For example, that's actually how we operate as a company for some of our customers and even a few single persons: we provide SaaS AND setup documentation. Customers can transparently take over at any time. We even help separate domains, credentials, and administration from us. Convenience without captivity. I am sure there are hundreds of shops like ours, providing comparable services for people in their wider neighborhood.
  • sylens 10mo ago
    Upvoting this because I don't see this sentiment expressed too often on here. In fact, I often see the opposite. "Why would I pay $X*2 for this service when I can just pay $X to Google for the same thing?" Sometimes it takes a little more money to support these smaller managed service providers
  • flas9sd 10mo ago
    maybe for the business target audience, but I doubt this can be a thing for the majority of users. They just want to get on with their day, not learn magic words to search for and relate to each other. As for Apple fans, they specifically seek the vertical integration.
• aforty 10mo ago
  Has OP tried emailing Tim Cook directly and pleading his case?
• difosfor 10mo ago
  This should be illegal. What about normal people affected like this. He at least still stands a chance given his position.
• masonwan 10mo ago
  That's probably why people should not live in the gated garden. Once they made a mistake, you will feel alien in the free world outside.
• dtt101 10mo ago
  My partner was locked out by Apple last year during a password/device change gone awry. Two weeks and we finally got through to someone competent who fixed it. At one point it looked as though we would lose many of the videos of our son growing up. Since then I have been removing myself from the ecosystem - my email is from hey, file sync on Dropbox, obsidian for notes, whatsapp for messages. Sometimes it doesn’t feel as joined up, mostly it is way better. Moved to framework computers + omarchy last month and am not looking back.
• lrvick 10mo ago
  You do not own your apple account, and you never did. I would take this as a chance to learn about digital sovereignty and self hosting where you control your own data so this never happens again. Google and Apple can and will delete your content at any time for any reason and there is no appeals court.
• ss64 10mo ago
  This is the same guy who had $60,000 permanently locked in his Wise account 6 months ago, that is quite a run of bad luck. https://cloudisland.nz/@parisba/114504600921948939 https://cloudisland.nz/@parisba/114504600921948939
  • nullfield 10mo ago
    And now some suspicion starts setting in. Granted, someone is going to have multiple runs of “bad luck”, statistically.
• orthoxerox 10mo ago
  This sucks, I hope you can somehow reach Apple and get them to unfuck your account. My own experience with big tech account bans was much milder, so I learned my lesson without much pain. I got a "free Azure credit to learn cloud computing" email from MS, redeemed the credit, created a VM, started clicking around the settings and got locked out. Raised a support ticket, asked what I did wrong, told my account was flagged for suspicious activity. I asked what I did wrong again and got a reply that my case had been reviewed by a human and that my Azure account wouldn't be reactivated. Thankfully, my primary MS account didn't get banned for that. Conclusion #1: it's frankly insane that a big tech company can fully terminate your account with no means of recourse. People like to mock the EU and its lawfare, but I think it is the best candidate to force the tech firms to implement some sort of firewall between their various services, so they can't terminate your access without prior notice or without compensation. Conclusion #2: those who are reading this, don't put all your eggs into one basket and teach your friends and relatives to do so as well. That is, if you have to use the services of various big tech companies, spread them around. Have a boring account with one company that you use for free stuff, a boring account with another company that you use for paid services (if you can purchase services X and Y from two different companies, do so), a boring account with a third company that you use for getting paid, a fourth account that you use for shitposting and getting into arguments with internet strangers.
• tlogan 10mo ago
  I just want to point that buying gift cards in order to participate in gift-card arbitrage violates both apple rules and payment provider rules. If you are buying large amounts of gift cards and then redeeming them, it is critical that your purchasing patterns do not look suspicious, such as buying more things that a normal user might need: multiple iphone wallets, multiple iPhones, or similar items.
• jdejean 10mo ago
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• geor9e 10mo ago
  I wish people would understand how common this is. There's no customer service line you can call when some overseas moderation farm worker spends 0.8 seconds looking at something and taps the hotkey for one of the reasons in their terms of service that they deem an account should be permanently wiped for. Have some recourse. Buy a NAS that will do automatic backups of all your cloud accounts. Long ago I lost a decade of Gmail and GDrive because I posted a PNG file of a credit‑card form that said "This post only viewable with Google+ Gold." You need to be treating these accounts as ephemeral.
• 0xCE0 10mo ago
  These kinds of cases just triggers all the rage for me, be they true or not and whatever is the actual case. I have fresh experience of setting up Azure/M365 and AppleDev for my startup. Those things are scary as f*uck, in many perspectives: (1) Dark patterns everywhere (click this checkbox and we'll buy you a license, oops +xxxxx €/$ per year just came; get one-month trial for O365 to get bizaccount, select 1 license, see that there is 25 licenses (~ 4k €/$) to be renewed if I don't cancel). (2) Microtransactions everywhere (e.g. Azure VM SSD I/O: every read/write operations costs), DDOS and 10/100 k€ bill coming. Everything "scales", especially bills. And no billing caps, of course. (3) Codesign with Microsoft: I have option to wait weeks for freight ship to ship USB cert token (if it ever survives past toll/postal service after that), or use AzureKeyVault, but that is officially only for companies that has taxes/accounting for 3 years of operation. So no startup can use that by this requirement to codesign?! (4) AppleDev (and kind of Azure/MS too) requires DUNS number, which takes 6 weeks to get in normal case. Apple's 5 bizday route doesn't exist anymore (at least not for non-US-based companies). Or just use D&B magic link from Grok and get it immediately in 5 mins. (5) If you base your business on Azure/M365 and AppleDev and be obidient and compliant (as I am doing/being, because I'm building real legit and long-term company, not some hussle project), it still doesn't matter, because they can just can decide by human/ML to shut your business operations and means of living. And getting answers like in the title's article's screenshots with those emojis are just the most non-human interaction that there can be done for affecting so devastatingly to someone's life/business. These are the most disgusting things that I know of.
• krick 10mo ago
  I probably shouldn't be surprised, but… so, you are saying, Apple can remotely brick YOUR device? For any reason, let alone "because of a mistake"? Heh, and I was considering to buy my first iPhone. I mean, seriously, I can only shrug at the fact that anybody accepts these terms at all.
• bradgessler 10mo ago
  Dustin Curtis wrote about a similar incident at https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account Slightly different issue involving the Apple credit card, but it’s just as insane that there’s no separation between the different parts of Apple. For that reason I will never have an Apple Card, and I guess I won’t be redeeming Apple gift cards with my Apple ID.
• notShabu 10mo ago
  I think apple is a red herring here, it's the amount of legal power granted to the enforcement of money laundering laws and the lack of ability to push back against this Musk/Jobs archetypes, though unpalatable at a personal level, are valuable in their willingness to burn themselves up to fight the "system" vs bureaucratic types who just fall in line and elevate what is a political issue into a Sacred Value
• init_31 10mo ago
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• petersumskas 10mo ago
  As you are in Australia you might get somewhere if you lodge a complaint with Consumer Affairs https://www.accc.gov.au/ https://www.accc.gov.au/ And there are also separate bodies for each state.
• idk1 10mo ago
  There really should be a law around being able to access and review locked accounts. I've seen so many cases of people just losing their digital lives because of an automated system.
  • abigail95 10mo ago
    Regular old contract law will handle this fine. State a claim to a court and let Apple respond to it. It's not beyond the reach of the author to do this.
• dvfjsdhgfv 10mo ago
  I deeply sympathise with the author. Nevertheless, the irony of this is overwhelming: a guy who spent his life promoting a company whose model is "we deeply control the products you use" gets burned by the fact they deeply control the products he's been using.
• dangus 10mo ago
  This is one reason I moved to a cloud photos provider (Ente) with an automated continuous export feature so that everything can go to my NAS. Also because I know big tech has no real customer support. It’s no comfort to OP though and I feel very sorry for them.
• anonu 10mo ago
  This type of stuff makes me want to buy gold and guns.
• stackedinserter 10mo ago
  I don't feel sorry for a person that heard all these stories before and didn't say a word, and continued to promoted Apple crap. "I have contacts in Apple, I'm better than all those losers". Well you were, until you were not.
• siiiiii 10mo ago
  About 11 months ago, this happened to my Apple account that I’ve used for over two decades, with purchases worth probably tens of thousands. Apple Support told me these “decisions are taken in a higher department” and escalated me to tier 2, who insisted: “we’ve determined your account doesn’t meet the conditions to enable it.” Their suggestion was for me to create a new Apple account. Then, three days later, my account was suddenly re-enabled; and it has worked perfectly ever since, as if nothing happened. I hadn’t used gift cards in nearly a decade, so my guess (and this is pure speculation) is there must be other flags affecting older accounts. The whole episode was utterly kafkaesque, and it’s made me much more cautious about relying too heavily on the whims of our private megacorp gatekeepers.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• punnerud 10mo ago
  A good reminded to myself to do another GDPR request and download all my iCloud images to an external hard drive
• db48x 10mo ago
  Sue them. If you don't sue them, they’ll just keep doing it.
• andriesm 10mo ago
  This really sucks, I hope Apple sorts it out, I wonder what one can do to put pressure on Apple - I suspect you may need a lawyer to write them in order to get your issue escalated. I don't like that people just shrug and say this is how all big tech is. Apple charges a premium and built their brand name on customer service. But they have stopped caring about the customer. I was also a loyal Apple customer for 2 decades and used to recommend them to everyone. Now I recommend them to no one. I've switched my phone back to android a few years ago to avoid apple lock-in. I still use an ipad pro and several macs and peripherals, sets of airpods and apple tv and what not - then I wanted to buy the watch - and was told it cannot work with any of their tablets or computer and cannot be activated without an apple phone. OK apple. One day my debit card expired while on long overseas travel, suddenly I was unable to install apps I already paid for on my mac and other devices, update any apps, or install free apps, I could not pay with a different card because those were in a different region and would have required a region switch locking me out of a lot of content and apps. So for several months I could not install many of my apps I bought on my other sevice or update or install free apps. OK Apple. I also remember how the base config of Apple laptops were 8gb ram and 256gb SSD when all other decent ones were on 16 and 2tb - and remember apple is supposed to be a premium brand and they're supposed to not burn you with a default config. OK apple. Then they charge you 3 times more for the upgrade from 256gb ssd to 2tb than what 2tb costs retail. OK Apple. I still love their tablets and laptops and even the mac mini. But I've already started to mentally prepare for a switch to Linux and maybe x86 or other hardware. Apple cannot be trusted. They are a fashion company and not a tech company any more. Jobs is dead. Plan your exit, reduce your exposure, soon they will be so evil and dysfunctional that you will regret it. Don't trust them with your most valuable data. Use other services. Use a diverse mix of providers, no apple exclusivity. If you tie your entire life to one cloud, especially Apple, you have set yourself up for future ruin. Their software quality and reliability is also slowly slipping. Everything is being dumbed down. Their business processes are becoming a broken maze. Apple used to be a company that aimed to satisfy simultaneously the power user and the basic user, now they only care about optimising for the casual user mass market, power user is going to have an increasingly tough time with them. Remember it is now a fashion company, watch their keynotes and believe the vapid image they project.
• btfo 10mo ago
  Congrats, you did this to yourself by willingly using proprietary software you have no control over and now you cry that you have no control. You did this to yourself.
• parisidau 10mo ago
  I've added a few updates on the original post, but there's no fix yet: https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/ https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/ Feel free to chat to me on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/hey.paris https://bsky.app/profile/hey.paris) or Mastodon (https://cloudisland.nz/@parisba https://cloudisland.nz/@parisba) or email if you have ideas. I've received nearly 500 emails!
• gigatexal 10mo ago
  Yikes it’s gotten here. Come on Apple! Update 14 December 2025: Someone from Executive Relations at Apple says they’re looking into it. I hope this is true. They say they’ll call me back tomorrow, on 15 December 2025. In the mean time, it’s been covered by Daring Fireball, Apple Insider, Michael Tsai, and others, thanks folks! I’ve received 100s of emails of support, and will reply to you all in time, thank you. Finger’s crossed Apple calls back. Second Update 14 December 2025: No luck so far, and not looking good. Anyone got a good lawyer to send them a letter and/or help me sue them? paris AT paris.id.au Update 16 December 2025: The Register covered it. No luck yet.
• sgtaylor5 10mo ago
  His problem is fixed today; the gift card was already redeemed. Apple turned his Apple account back on.
• da_grift_shift 10mo ago
  Update posted at https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/ https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/: Update 18 December 2025: We’re back! A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to redeem, which did not work for me, and did not credit my account, was already redeemed in some way (sounds like classic gift card tampering), and my account was caught by that. Obviously it’s unacceptable that this can happen, and I’m still trying to get more information out of him, but at least things are now mostly working. Strangely, he did tell me to only ever buy gift cards from Apple themselves; I asked if that means Apple’s supply chain of Blackhawk Network, InComm, and other gift card vendors is insecure, and he was unwilling to comment.