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

hey.paris

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

#321

Post by varispeed »

stavros wrote: post #203
x3sphere wrote: post #32

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…

It would make more sense to stop offering gift cards, which make zero financial sense for the consumer, but why stop offering a lucrative product that people buy because they're bad at logic, when you can just shut down accounts and greatly inconvenience people at no cost to you?

One practical reason gift cards exist is tax treatment. In the UK, small non-cash gifts to employees can be tax-free under the “trivial benefits” rules (each under £50, not cash or cash-equivalent). For owner-managed companies, directors have a £300 annual cap across such benefits. Cash or cash-redeemable vouchers don’t qualify and are taxed like salary.

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

#324

Post by franga2000 »

wink wrote: post #292
viraptor wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards You'd think so. Yet, the stories of PayPal locking up payouts to surprised people keep coming every year - and people still use them.

That's so much not a fitting comparison. The most money I have ever had on my PayPal account was 100 bucks from a reversed transaction (like, double booking of a hotel room or wrong item sent), otherwise it's just a gateway. It would be annoying if my PayPal account was locked, because I use it a lot to order pizza online and a few small purchases. I could just use my credit card or something else but it's more click…

There are a good number of freelancers of various sorts that get paid via PayPal and only occasionally pull that money to their bank accounts to avoid the fixed fee, or even prefer to spend much of it straight from PayPal to avoid the percent fee. People also use it to send money between family members in different countries because it's often cheaper than an international wire.

It's quite easy to build up a few hundred or thousand USD worth. It feels just enough like a bank account that you think you're safe. Then...well, the internet is full of PayPal horror stories, I won't bore you with my own.

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

#325

Post by duskdozer »

stanac wrote: post #289
immibis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Don't use Apple. Or Google.

If it was be that simple. In that case I would have to go to the bank for every transaction/payment I want to initiate online. Banking app doesn't work for jailbroken devices. Using PC to access banks website works, but transactions still require 2FA and they don't support any other 2FA flow except the one in the app.

I'm surprised, most banks I've come across force sms or phone-call 2fa only. A rare few allow generic TOTP authenticators, and maybe one or two has an app as an option. And I've only come across one bank that detects and warns for root access. Is there no "jailbreak hide" on ios?

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

#326

Post by onehair »

akho wrote: post #318

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.

> 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.

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

#327

Post by mschuster91 »

viraptor wrote: post #260
jasode wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. It's also the buying of gift cards that can get Apple accounts locked: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/r8b1lu/apple_will_pe... If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans. - Don't give Apple gift cards to family and friends: You're potenti…

> If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards You'd think so. Yet, the stories of PayPal locking up payouts to surprised people keep coming every year - and people still use them.

> You'd think so. Yet, the stories of PayPal locking up payouts to surprised people keep coming every year - and people still use them.

At least in Europe, PayPal is a regulated bank which means you can hand the case over to the authorities and they can and will help you out.

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

#328

Post by franga2000 »

stanac wrote: post #289
immibis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Don't use Apple. Or Google.

If it was be that simple. In that case I would have to go to the bank for every transaction/payment I want to initiate online. Banking app doesn't work for jailbroken devices. Using PC to access banks website works, but transactions still require 2FA and they don't support any other 2FA flow except the one in the app.

There's always a workaround. There are banks with far less annoying root checking and you can just switch. Many banks allow SMS or a physical authenticator for web banking or 3DS 2FA. There are also many was to bypass root detection. If your main problem is 3DS 2FA for online card payments, get a proxy card.

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

#329

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mcherm wrote: post #314
embedding-shape wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The laws against that are very strict, incentivizing companies to overshoot and block false positives. Yes, in many countries they are, but I don't think the laws are dictating Apple to completely turn off the accounts, but instead dictate that Apple should take measures against it. They could disable those gift card features + Apple wallet/pay if they suspect fraud, and if no one complains within a month, then dis…

> I don't think the laws are dictating Apple to completely turn off the accounts, but instead dictate that Apple should take measures against it. You misunderstand the nature of financial regulation. The laws on things like money laundering are intentionally vague, they say things like "Apple should take measures against it". And financial regulators will not come out and say (especially in writing) that you MUST do…

This is also one of the reasons the government is fond of gag orders. If companies could tell you "sorry we closed your account because of government pressure" then at least you would know why, but then you would know why. Which could give you standing to challenge it or create bad PR for the government and generate public outrage sufficient to make them stop doing that.

So instead they censor the company from telling you the reason, because everyone whose account is locked is guilty of Terrorism, obviously, and the people actually committing fraud would be unable to discern that they've tripped the detection system from the fact that their account is locked unless you told them that was why. Certainly not because it would make people unsympathetic to what the government is doing.

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

#330

Post by kuon »

seszett wrote: post #282
kuon wrote: post #195

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…

> 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…

Because it will be used by other services. Like google requiring one for you to use their services. That's the problem.
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