Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

hey.paris

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 1001 posts

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

#431

Post by crtasm »

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.

I thought I'd buy Cory Doctrow's Enshittification ebook direct from his website. Surprised to be redirected to Paypal with no other option.

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

#432

Post by storus »

subscribed wrote: post #197
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…

I had Amazon close my old, almostt-unused account in Amazon-in-another-country because I dared to add a new payment method. I proved them who I am, that the new payment method (virtual card from a well-known organization) is mine, everything. After lots of back-forth I've been informed their decision is final. I HAVE NOT BREACHED TOS. I wish I has a major law company behind me to force them to admit that. Very happy…

Amazon expects you hire a consultant that is a buddy with the manager responsible for closing your account, and bribe them through that engagement to re-enable your account. They started doing that a decade ago with the mass-banning of legitimate sellers.

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

#433

Post by lapcat »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #410
KPGv2 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Does iOS?

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.

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

#434

Post by superkuh »

yunwal wrote: post #416
dariosalvi78 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even better advice: Don't buy Apple.

In phones you have a choice of iOS (Apple) or Android (Google). Sure, maybe some people can go back to flip phones, but I can’t without finding a new job. This is the first I’ve heard of Apple locking someone out of their account for no reason. Google does it all the time. So, yeah, can’t leave Apple over this.

So keep your crappy crap phone for a job and use a real computer for your personal life.

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

#435

Post by bdangubic »

queenkjuul wrote: post #372
wink wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That you don't keep a PayPal balance and i don't buy Apple gift cards is irrelevant to the people that do keep a PayPal balance and do use Apple gift cards

I wish there are more comments like this on HN - well done :)

the number of people commenting like “well I don’t do/use/…” is mind-boggling

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

#436

Post by anildash »

immibis wrote: post #259
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…

- Don't use Apple. Or Google.

People love to smugly suggest this useless advice like there aren’t literal public services from governments around the world that are being tied to these platforms, let alone the many private companies which gate access to their goods and services behind apps on proprietary devices.

To say nothing of the fact that well-adjusted humans need to communicate with friends and family, and many times that also practically requires being on these platforms as well.

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

#437

Post by bragr »

ovi256 wrote: post #418
pavel_lishin wrote: post #406

> 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…

> I have escalated this through my many friends in WWDR and SRE at Apple, with no success. Ouch. If he can't get it fixed, it's scary

From my experiences with people at Apple, everyone seems so siloed that it doesn't surprise me that they couldn't help him. It doesn't seem like they have the culture where you could just drop by the Apple fraud team and ask for help for a friend.

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

#438

Post by yreg »

cheschire wrote: post #400
viktorcode wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the rationale? Most likely stolen cards. Stolen credit cards are used to purchase gift cards which are then resold to unsuspecting buyers. Think of it as stolen money laundering.

I always wondered why sites like g2a sell gift cards at a price higher than the gift card is actually worth. A lot of things are clicking into place for me in this thread.

Youtube is full of scam baiting videos – of people who waste scammer's time for entertainment.

A very usual scenario is that the scammer pretends to be a technician doing some remote support and for example pretends to provide some refund. Then they pretend that they've mistakenly sent out e.g. 10x the amount and they ask for the difference back, claiming that their job is on the line.

Crypto would work, but since they target old and tech-illiterate people, the easiest way is usually to ask the victim to go to a store, buy gift cards and read out the codes.

Google kitboga (a known scam baiter) for the videos.

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

#439

Post by Workaccount2 »

iambateman wrote: post #401

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…

What sucks is that it's a group of probably like 2000 people who are causing all the insane bureaucracy around these digital accounts.

People running scams that will shamelessly and relentlessly pull any string at their disposal to keep their account running.

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

#440

Post by insane_dreamer »

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.

Post reply on HN