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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

#511

Post by hamdingers »

flatter wrote: post #495
evanelias wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Did you even read the article? "The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan" a 6TB plan is $29.99 monthly.. It's not farfetched to assume he purchased a $500 gift card so he could keep the subscription without worrying about it! "The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Am…

Did you read the comment you're responding to? Where in the article does it explain why an adult is buying a $500 gift card to pay their apple subscription instead of just paying for it directly?

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

#512

Post by jasode »

quinncom wrote: post #446
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…

I'm the author of that Reddit post. I should probably update it to clarify that I didn’t just purchase the gift cards, but also redeemed them. I don’t think it was purchasing them that triggered the lock on my Apple account. I mean, after all, how would they know what my Apple account is until they’re redeemed?

>, how would they know what my Apple account is until they’re redeemed?

To add context, your reddit post also mentioned: >, I purchased eleven Apple Gift cards from [...], and apple.com, and added the amounts to my Apple account.

I'm not saying the following applies to you but one can buy Apple Gift Cards using their Apple ID. After adding gift cards to the ecommerce shopping bag on Apple.com, it offers the option : "Check out with your Apple Account"

So Apple would know the exact AppleID at the time-of-sale instead of waiting until redemption. If for some reason Apple's fraud detection system doesn't like the transaction (e.g. unusual ip address from Mexico instead of USA, or too many high-value cards in a certain time period, or other black-box opaque heuristic) ... then the buyer puts their Apple account at risk.

Fraud prevention heuristics are insanely aggresive these days...

Last week, I bought a Netflix subscription and 5 days later, Netflix cancelled the membership for no apparent reason. I got on a customer support chat with Netflix and the agent said it was cancelled because of the credit-card #. It didn't pass their fraud prevention system and to try using another card. At least Netflix automatically refunded the entire amount back to me -- whereas Apple keeps the gift card balance for itself after locking accounts.

In another incident, I used a Chase credit-card at a physical Apple store to buy 2 iPhones on 2 separate receipts. The first iPhone sale was a success. The 2nd iPhone transaction just 1 minute later was denied and Chase locked the entire account. I had to call Chase customer service and recite the make & model of a car I had 20 years ago to prove my identity for them to re-activate the credit card!

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

#513

Post by the_af »

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 similar trouble redeeming a gift card on Amazon. Twice. (thankfully they got resolved upon appeal).

Enough that I am very wary of buying or redeeming gift cards now, especially more than one in a row.

Apparently there's some sort of scam with gift cards, which must affect any platform which allows them, and legit uses often get flagged by automated systems.

If they are so much trouble for Amazon/Apple I wonder why not disallow gift cards, instead of randomly banning users?

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

#514

Post by haspok »

yreg wrote: post #422
amelius wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised that evangelists keep thinking they are safe from the evil of big corporations.

There's no reason to presume that the author 'thinks' that.

Then why did he mention it (their credentials)? It has literally zero relevance in this case. Maybe they were trying to show off?

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

#515

Post by elphinstone »

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…

Oh, yes, only "important" people deserve customer service. That is an appallingly elitist attitude.

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

#516

Post by rvnx »

bobim wrote: post #502
kibwen wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have root access to your machine, it's not your machine. If you don't have root access to the machine your data is on, it's not your data.

Brillant, I'm stealing it.

Even Meta approves. If it is not your data why should data protection laws apply ?

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

#517

Post by Gabrys1 »

evanelias wrote: post #460
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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?

[flagged]

> I'm more curious how/why the author ended up with a $500 gift card. That's a large amount, and the author never shares how this was obtained, which seems like a key missing detail. Did the author buy the gift card for himself (why?) or did someone give him a very large gift (why not mention that?)

The author mentions a big store (names it similar to Walmart for US based readers).

I would assume this was an accepted form of "return a product without a receipt" or "we want to accept your complain about this product we sold going crazy 1 day after it's warranty but we cannot give you cash back" etc

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

#518

Post by chongli »

lapcat wrote: post #383
noitpmeder wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 b…

To further stretch the analogy: the main street is now full of potholes, sinkholes, and even landmines. The root problem is that, in exchange for convenience, we as a society have ceded too much power to these large businesses and we are now paying the price for it. We have bought the proverbial monorail [1] and now we are stuck with it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJ4MFCxiuo

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

#519

Post by evanelias »

flatter wrote: post #495
evanelias wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Did you even read the article? "The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan" a 6TB plan is $29.99 monthly.. It's not farfetched to assume he purchased a $500 gift card so he could keep the subscription without worrying about it! "The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Am…

Yes, I read the article and it simply does not directly address who purchased the card.

It certainly implies the author bought the card for himself, yes; but that seems rather unusual to me, especially in such a high amount.

Why would you purchase a $500 gift card for yourself to "keep a subscription without worrying about it" as opposed to just paying the small monthly amount? Honest question, I literally don't understand that motivation at all. In my mind a gift card is more problematic than a normal credit card in this scenario since it eventually runs out.

Second question: why did you create an HN account just to write this comment?

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

#520

Post by basisword »

elphinstone wrote: post #515
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…

Oh, yes, only "important" people deserve customer service. That is an appallingly elitist attitude.

Nobody said that.
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