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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#31

Post by vablings »

sigseg1v wrote: post #22
oidar wrote: post #7

I'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. Ap…

Agreed. A situation similar to this happened to me with Steam over a payment issue with their service. They banned me even though I had thousands of dollars of games and an account since Sept 2003. I had to go to my bank and escalate multiple times to get letters providing the info steam wanted about my account and credit card to prove it was legitimate. Eventually after contacting them enough times they said they wo…

Sadly, the real issue here is with the banks and the payment processors. It's very likely that they have metrics for larger marketplaces about being below a threshold for fraud. Online game stores like steam live, breathe and die by payment processing.

This was the reason why free trade was removed from RuneScape back in the day and it wasn't even a Jagex issue. People would go to 3rd party gold selling websites and then pay for gold with stolen credit cards. They could easily keep the money because the trade cannot be reversed without a moderator and what they were doing was against the rules so everyone would just get banned. The payment processors saw a bunch of fraud related to a game called RuneScape and told Jagex if they dont fix this then they will be blacklisted.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#32

Post by Xylakant »

SirMaster wrote: post #25
freedomben wrote: post #8

Genuine question: if your Apple account is locked, and you're unable to create a new one, is your iPhone still usable?

Why can't you make a new one?

Your iphone is tied to the old apple account and you can't untie it if you can't access the old account. (You can go through support with proof of purchase, but that requires you have proof of purchase at hand etc.)

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#33

Post by dagmx »

freedomben wrote: post #8

Genuine question: if your Apple account is locked, and you're unable to create a new one, is your iPhone still usable?

Yes, you can continue to use anything that doesn’t require using Apple services.

So you could use your existing apps but not download new ones from the App Store.

You could use iMessage with some restrictions. You could use Apple Music but only the free radios. You could use Apple’s photos but would lose sync.

Usability depends on how much you rely on those services, but the device itself is still useable for other things.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#34

Post by tiffanyh »

I don’t want to minimize the pain people experience here, but it’s worth calling out just how hard this problem is for retailers and issuers.

Gift cards are the #1 fraud vector in payments ... because it lets stolen cards be converted into a cash-like equivalent with zero traceability.

So fraud/risk system are highly sensitive to gift cards.

It's not an excuse, but I see in this thread people minimizing the problem at hand - so I just wanted to call that out.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#35

Post by neilv »

> > There is one way the Apple community could exert some leverage over Apple. Since innocently redeeming a compromised Apple Gift Card can have serious negative consequences, we should all avoid buying Apple Gift Cards and spread the word as widely as possible that they could essentially be malware.

It's December holidays time, but I assume that most Apple gift cards that would be purchased for the holidays already have been, so...

Maybe people should also be urged to demand to return any Apple gift cards already bought. Arm people with a copy of the news story. If retailers resist, then regulators can get involved.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

I don’t want to minimize the pain people experience here, but it’s worth calling out just how hard this problem is for retailers and issuers. Gift cards are the #1 fraud vector in payments ... because it lets stolen cards be converted into a cash-like equivalent with zero traceability. So fraud/risk system are highly sensitive to gift cards. It's not an excuse, but I see in this thread people minimizing the problem a…

It would be a suboptimal UX potentially (vs live funds on a physical gift card), but Apple could tie the gift card to an Apple ID at purchase with a QR code or something similar, and then permit gifting through the existing Apple ecosystem primitives. Apple could then enforce stronger controls as the value is transferred internally on their internal ledger. In financial services, its all about tradeoffs.

The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38905889 - January 2024

($day_job is financial services, a component of my work is fraud mitigation)

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#37

Post by Apreche »

sneak wrote: post #27
Apreche wrote: post #18

The real problem is that companies do not offer any accessible, powerful, and intelligent customer support. Even if they have real humans to talk to, they simply follow a script. Those agents do not have the ability to investigate a situation or the power to use their discretion to take meaningful action. We should impose, by law, the following rules on all companies that offer accounts to their customers. 1. If they…

> The real problem is that companies do not offer any accessible, powerful, and intelligent customer support. No, the real problem is that we have no reasonable alternatives when companies misbehave. There is no meaningful way to exist in society today without an Apple or Google account, and that's actually insane. It's doubly insane for people who aren't citizens of the United States (although the CCP addressed this…

Even if there were viable alternatives, I believe people who chose to use an Apple, Google, or any other account should still have the rights I proposed.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#38

Post by wrxd »

purpleflame1257 wrote: post #4

Every 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.

If you never start you'll never be free. It's also not all or nothing. You can keep things with Google, self-host new stuff and gradually move over things that make sense to mover over.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#40

Post by citrin_ru »

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

I don’t want to minimize the pain people experience here, but it’s worth calling out just how hard this problem is for retailers and issuers. Gift cards are the #1 fraud vector in payments ... because it lets stolen cards be converted into a cash-like equivalent with zero traceability. So fraud/risk system are highly sensitive to gift cards. It's not an excuse, but I see in this thread people minimizing the problem a…

How it's zero traceability if Apple can see: 1. credit card used to by a gift card 2. who exactly redeemed a gift card.

It can be traced, the problem that they block accounts (probably using on FP prone algorithm) even if a gift card was not purchased using a stolen credit card.

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