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

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

Post by markus_zhang »

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?

My recommendation is to completely drop the Apple ecosystem, however painful it is. I do use an iPhone but I treat it as just a phone. If Apple locks me out I dgaf.

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

#612

Post by rrrix1 »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #67
compounding_it wrote: post #55

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 to…

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 healthcar…

> 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.

I’m feeling attacked. Here I was thinking my lifelong work of self sufficiency for my family was completely reasonable until you came along. Thanks a lot!

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

#613

Post by lloeki »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #603
tonymet wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe iPhone is adding those ?

First of all, you don't have to care about this, unless you are wanting something from others and you depend on others and their opinion about your writing significantly. That said, it does make your writing seem very odd. A little bit like the people, who apparently don't know what the shift key does, or how to trigger capital letters on their phones or something, and write only in lowercase letters. Just because yo…

In French there is a thin space (and failing support for thin space, a NBSP) before `?` and `!`. Not before `.` though.

If missing, these spaces are automatically added which various autocorrect features of localised OSes or otherwise.

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

#614

Post by a2fz »

rationalist wrote: post #557
IndianShitbombs wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> t. What if you used your Apple account as SSO to other services ? Your own wrongdoing. Always use a site-specific auth method, i.e. by email. And a separate email for each site.

Using a separate email address for each site is smart, but creating a separate email account for each site is going to be very tedious, and I imagine Google, Yahoo, etc are going to stop you very quickly after you've opened 20+ accounts with the same phone number. (Use a catch-all to have different email addresses for different sites, because when one gets hacked, then the damage is limited.)

https://sidebox.net is a nice way to do this as long as the site doesn't restrict to mainstream email domains

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

#615

Post by zygentoma »

rationalist wrote: post #557
IndianShitbombs wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> t. What if you used your Apple account as SSO to other services ? Your own wrongdoing. Always use a site-specific auth method, i.e. by email. And a separate email for each site.

Using a separate email address for each site is smart, but creating a separate email account for each site is going to be very tedious, and I imagine Google, Yahoo, etc are going to stop you very quickly after you've opened 20+ accounts with the same phone number. (Use a catch-all to have different email addresses for different sites, because when one gets hacked, then the damage is limited.)

Google allows email suffices a la my account+anything@gmail.com.

So you can use different email addresses for different accounts while having only one Gmail account.

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

#616

Post by wpm »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #556

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.

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.

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

#617

Post by abenga »

akho wrote: post #457
zerr wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Apple sell giftcards?

Some cultures stigmatize gifting money, yet gifting corporate scrip is fine.

Then why do they ban accounts for using them? Is it some sort of honeypot?

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

#618

Post by shelled »

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.

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

#619

Post by QuiEgo »

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.

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

#620

Post by [deleted] »

wpm wrote: post #608
quickthrowman wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not trying to be rude, but what is the point of buying and then redeeming gift cards yourself? I just pay Apple with my credit card when I want to buy something. Is this some kind of weird credit card rewards churning thing? Are you unbanked? I don’t understand why you’d voluntarily add unnecessary extra steps. A credit card offers far more protections to consumers than a gift card. Given the amount of false posi…

Lots of stores offer deals on gift cards, essentially giving g you a discount at the cards’ store. $100 Apple gift card for $80 means you can buy something at Apple for $20 off if it is less than $100.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN