Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
1–10 of 479 posts
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#2It's almost a rhetorical question, isn't it? Clearly, from both the original post, and this reporting, they are NOT safe to redeem.
In addition, it just re-emphasizes how tied we all are to these "digital lives". I used to do it without a blink, but now think twice before clicking "Login with Google/Apple".
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#3Related:
Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help.
1730 points, 1045 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#4Every time a read a story like this, I feel an atavistic desire to self-host eveything. But I've had my Google account for 20 years now; the die is cast.
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#5Related: there is a known scam where someone will ask for payment by things like Ebay gift cards. To "prove you have the card", you are asked to read off just the last few digits of the card - which unbeknownst to the intended victim is actually all that is needed to redeem the card.
You can reliably reconstruct a SSN that is missing the first digits, if you know where the person lived when they filed for it, but that's not the same thing.
Why Ebay built this idiotic weakness into their cards is beyond me.
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#6Gift cards: it's a steal, so just say no. I want to say if you get one from your sister-in-law give it back but now I'm afraid she'll face terrible consequences from cashing it out.
... note an update on this story: Paris got his account unblocked today, thanks to the story being covered here and throughout the blogosphere. It's a good outcome but not a path open to most people:
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#7I'm glad that got resolved for Paris, but what the hell is a normal person supposed to do. Not every one has that kind of public reach to get a satisfactory resolution. First he had understand what happened technically, then he needed a public platform to tell people about it, then that writing needed to get reposted by others, than PR needed to get involved. Not something that's going to happen for a normal user.
Apple, Google, and the big players are not a trustworthy place to entrust precious data. Increasingly, Apple and Google aren't very much different as they are both in the advertisement business: the great misaligner of incentives.
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#8Genuine question: if your Apple account is locked, and you're unable to create a new one, is your iPhone still usable?
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#9It's almost a rhetorical question, isn't it? Clearly, from both the original post, and this reporting, they are NOT safe to redeem. In addition, it just re-emphasizes how tied we all are to these "digital lives". I used to do it without a blink, but now think twice before clicking "Login with Google/Apple".
Personally I only use these login buttons for throwaway accounts, if it's something important, I'll use email/password.
Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
#10This fiasco stirs up a lot of different topics for me, none of which seem like they are likely to be resolved anytime soon.
First, with so much importance placed on an Apple/iCloud account in our current era it's not good that they can be shutdown so trivially. Someone can be shut out from using Messages, Apple Wallet, Digital Identification (depending on where they live) and all their subscriptions and media purchases without any recourse, in an instant. It's not hard to imagine someone being put into a pretty bad situation as a result of this with just a little bad luck and bad timing. It's easy to point out that you shouldn't be overly reliant on these technologies but I think it's more important that there be ways to safe guard people from this scenario. Apple should do more to handle these scenarios given the importance of an account now.
Second, there are other recent events that point out the failure modes and gaps that Apple (and Google?) need to address. There apparently is no way to cleanly divide purchases in a Divorce or separation, even if the person was fleeing an abusive situation. There's also no way to leave a "family" account even as an adult or how to assign children to multiple families. Again we can trot out the easy "Just don't use these things, use FOSS, Nextcloud, etc..." but I think Apple should do more to address these types of scenarios regardless of what people choose to use.