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

hey.paris

571–580 of 1001 posts

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

#571
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.

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

#572
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s against money laundering. Onerous regulations being interpreted highly defensively create these kind outcomes. Neither the people creating the legislations nor the people at Apple responsible for these flows care very much about collateral damage.

I think it's a combination of money laundering and phone scams where people are told they owe money to the IRS or something and are tricked into buying a bunch of gift cards. That said, if buying and redeeming gift cards are such an indicator of fraud that people are legitimately afraid of getting their accounts permanently locked, why doesn't Apple just stop selling them?

Apple keeps money from the gift card after banning you. Just business, nothing personal.

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

#573

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.

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.

Yes they work with iPhone

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

#575

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 collaborati…

How precisely do you reckon a lawyer would help?

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

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

I’m sorry but this sounds so preposterous that it’s making my point

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

#577
post #523

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 collaborati…

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…

I’ve interpreted it as a sort of head-in-sand coping mechanism for those low-likelihood, high-consequence events people feel powerless over. It’s less distressing to be powerless if you decide that the real issue was a fault by the victim and not a powerlessness you have in common with the victim.

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

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in a situation right now where Amazon delivered a fake product. Support suggested they can also try redelivery, and when I asked what if it happens again, they said it should not happen. It happened - fake again. Now the customer support flow is: you upload images of the product (max. three), and the system approves the verification or rejects it, and then you have a way to contact customer care. System rejected…

Wow, i received a fake product from Amazon ten years ago, their support gave me a full refund no questions asked. Shame how far they've fallen. (Fwiw, i never bought anything from Amazon again after receiving one fake item. If i want to gamble I'll pay Aliexpress prices)

[deleted]

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

#579
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?

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

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's baffling that gift cards are so popular. You're essentially paying to decrease the value of your own money by restricting its use and adding an expiration date (and handing to someone as a gift as if it's a thoughtful alternative to cash). An even more egregious case is the corporate credit card. The company dictates its use exclusively for business expenses, yet pushes all the liability onto the employee. The b…

Gift cards are great for companies you don't trust with (up-to-date) payment details. Amazon, Google, Apple, whatever evil megacorp you can think of, they all have made the news with stories like these, and they have proven time and again that they will stand by and defend their arbitrary decisions in court if they have to, because involving basic human intellect in the chain is too much of a fraud risk. Even if you…

This story proves that none of it matters if your money along with your account vanish because the megacorp doesn't like your gift card for whatever reason.

In fact, it is far worse than paying with a credit card directly in terms of risk. At least, when something goes wrong (which rarely ever happens), the bank has your back. On the other hand, I have seen too many cases where people find their gift card codes invalid.

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