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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#41

Post by altairprime »

owenthejumper wrote: post #2

It'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".

> Strangely, he did tell me to only ever buy gift cards from Apple themselves

The Singapore Apple exec person who eventually reported the issue fixed provided the above advice, and I think it is the best advice given to anyone in this entire situation.

What can a normal person do? Only buy Apple gift cards from Apple, only buy Home Depot gift cards from Home Depot, et cetera.

That one piece of advice destroys a retail line of revenue that’s suffering massive endpoint fraud and removes the vast majority of risks to recipients of gift cards, and is simply explained to uninterested people that those conveniently-placed gift cards are bait cast by fishers for the unwary.

(I’d also sue the retailer in small claims court for selling a fraudulent product that didn’t perform as advertised.)

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#42

Post by dcchambers »

The lack of "real, comment sense human support" from giant tech corporations is terrifying - and something that only regulation can fix. These tech companies have increasingly taken over our lives - getting locked out of a 20-year-old Google or Apple account could legitimately ruin your life - or at the very least - make it incredibly difficult for 6-12 months as you work to recover every account linked to it and migrate to something else.

One problem is that even if you can reach a real human - they have to follow a script and have strict limits on the problem solving they can do. If something falls outside of the normal support algorithm they are stuck.

What do you do if you're an average Joe without a popular tech blog and connections to the Apple community? How many people has this happened to that have just given up entirely?

Scary, scary world.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#43

Post by pixl97 »

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…

Then they are free to stop offering gift cards.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#44

Post by tjakab »

sevensor wrote: post #19
jnsaff2 wrote: post #11

If CloudFlare can do public post-mortems then so can Apple.

Notoriously secretive, siloed Apple, where even internally, teams are said to be entirely in the dark about each other’s work? I think Apple, culturally, can’t do a public post mortem no matter how much they might want to. I would love to be proven wrong on this, because I would very much like to understand what happened.

The same Apple that reset a large number of iCloud passwords last year with no warning or notice, and no public acknowledgement or explanation? It was determined after to only have affected legacy Apple IDs that predated iCloud, but there was never any confirmation from Apple.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#45

Post by paulpauper »

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.

creating backups is crucial. this includes all the contacts, texts of saved emails, photos and so on. Many of these ppl who get locked out fail to create local backups and rely on apple's cloud storage. big mistake.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#46

Post by IAmBroom »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #13
IAmBroom wrote: post #5

Related: 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 tha…

> 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. This used to be true, but isn’t for SSNs assigned since I think 2011 - the exact year could be wrong, that’s from memory. Since that switch, the component that used to be geographical is assigned randomly.

A wise move, IMO. The geographic thing made sense, pre-internet: our local office assigns only number that start "477-", and no other office does, so we can control for duplicate assignments.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#47

Post by Someone1234 »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #11

If CloudFlare can do public post-mortems then so can Apple.

They absolutely SHOULD; but they absolutely WON'T because they don't even think they did anything wrong (as opposed to CloudFlare who hangs their hat on the mistake).

Companies commonly claim security/anti-fraud, then refuse to explain their actions, claiming (again, without evidence) that justifying themselves would help fraudsters in some way.

But really this has nothing to do with anti-fraud, and everything to do with duopolies out of control and weak consumer protections doing nothing to push back.

That's why Google, Apple, and Microsoft are notorious for this.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#48

Post by wishfish »

Would checking the Apple gift card balance first be a useful precaution? Would it have saved Paris all this hassle?

Seems like this might be a necessary step if checking the balance would reveal there's something wrong with the card. Would be frustrating to see the $500 card is worthless but better than risking the bureaucratic hell.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#49

Post by alpinisme »

Apreche wrote: post #37
sneak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

As one data point, I would.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#50

Post by wackget »

I feel like all these articles are writing about the wrong thing. Yeah, it sucks that the guy's account got banned, and yeah, maybe we can't trust gift cards.

But the truly troublesome issue is how an entire ecosystem of (very expensive) hardware is allowed to be tied to an identity controlled by a giant black box of a corporation.

What I mean is: you can spend thousands and thousands on devices and configure them to be almost invaluable to your everyday life, but you are ultimately completely beholden to Apple. You require their ongoing permission to continue using those devices. You are completely at their mercy.

And sure, you can argue that people willingly sign up for that kind of agreement when they make the decision to purchase Apple/Google products but that's also missing the point. Phones are now essential utilities. Accessing vital services sometimes requires an iOS or Android device.

Permitting giant, uncontactable, merciless tech corporations to control the digital lives of virtually everyone on the planet is absolute insanity.

The scenario described in the OP's article should simply never be allowed to happen.

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