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Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

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Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#101

Post by vineyardmike »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #61

One frustrating thing about Apple is that if you try to get help, there isn’t really any way to do it. There isn’t any way to open a real support ticket that will be seen by an engineering team there. The store staff can only do basic things. And if you go to their forums, you will get bot-like responses telling you to follow some useless generic steps that do nothing for your specific problem, or weird replies justi…

Not trying to excuse their behavior, but my best friend and roommate was a part time phone support in college so I learned a few tricks…

1. They get a lot of dumb questions. If you want a “talk to an engineer” bug report, you really need to prove competency to the support staff. Obviously be nice because they’re not the source of your problems they’re just trying to do their job.

2. Chat staff aren’t able to do much, phone staff have more power and insight. Chat staff can’t see your account, can’t issue pity refunds, can’t make choices outside of the generic script. You should call during US business hours if you’re trying to call the US support. Best case scenario is finding a college student.

3. They’re required to have you follow the generic published help scripts first. If you pull up the webpage and directly tell staff you followed each step - then read them the steps for proof you know them - they’ll often be able to just to the “custom help” portion.

4. If you make any reference to the TOS/Laws/etc they will mark your account as troubled and you will never get service again. You get legal canned responses only. They seem you not a valuable customer anymore. Don’t reference warranty law, definitely don’t threaten to sue, etc.

5. They can see how many apple products you have registered, how much you spend, etc and the customer service agent can decide how generous to be. If you only own a 5yo iPhone, and you’re contacting support claiming the screen magically broke in your sleep they won’t help. If you’ve upgraded every iPhone in your house every year for a decade, they might be nice when it “magically breaks on its own”.

6. They have minimal training outside of the above mentioned docs. Again, the phone staff has better training. They have common devices in front of them, and if you can get someone sympathetic on the phone, they might try to reproduce it live. That’s the golden ticket to a bug report.

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#102

Post by drstewart »

fuomag9 wrote: post #84
Animats wrote: post #20

Apple says there is nothing wrong.[1] When your identity provider has total control over your life, and you signed away your right to sue for damages, this is what happens. [1] https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

I’m so glad it’s illegal for me to sign away my right to sue in Europe https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...

[flagged]

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#103

Post by coldtea »

HaZeust wrote: post #47

To this day, I still get random "Enter your password to continue using iCloud" push notifications on my iPhone with no relevant action to trigger such a notification. My Apple ID uses a unique password, I keep a recovery key, I don't have its login credentials saved anywhere, and it's a dev account; so I have my LLC's DUNS number attached to it. My devices are the only ones listed in my settings portal. I have no ide…

>I have no idea why I get these notifications, lol

Perhaps so that someone who found your iphone unlocked can't just keep using it and your iCloud in perpetuity?

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#104

Post by prmoustache »

newrotik wrote: post #49

Only tangentially related, but I have been trying to enroll for Apple's developer program for almost 3 months now. Understanding what the problem is is essentially impossible. Going to a physical store doesn't help, calling their customer service has them telling you to go to www.apple.com/support (???), and writing for support has them rotate you through 4 different, and decreasingly useful, representatives. The las…

Then don't develop for them.

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#105

Post by nativeit »

microtonal wrote: post #65
leptons wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does the "walled garden" keep you safe, the walls are also too tall to escape it.

You can use a Mac or iPhone without an iCloud account. Doing so works fine for Mac, most applications can be downloaded outside an app store. Sadly on iOS it makes the phone pretty useless if you want to install any third-party apps. Like others say, it's fairly easy to escape, just keep backups outside iCloud. Also, it's probably best to use a password manager that is not iCloud Keychain.

Agreed. What’s more, I find iCloud’s implementation in MacOS to be far less intrusive than OneDrive in Windows, which constantly pushes me to use it as a default, and has at least once unilaterally forced the issue during an update by moving my home folders into OneDrive, and leaving an absolutely wild text file titled “Where Did My Files Go.txt” on the desktop. If I don’t want to use iCloud, I can easily forget it exists.

I’m not terribly partisan when it comes to platforms, I own and actively use an M1 Mac Mini, Dell Precision running Windows, and a Kubuntu box. I understand the assertion that software ecosystems tend to be a featured player in tactics aimed to fix users on a particular device or platform, and I think there’s plenty of evidence that this is broadly the case. But I wouldn’t use iCloud as a particularly good example of it, Apple’s clearly not banking on their cloud storage to drive its revenue.

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#106

Post by stavros »

vbezhenar wrote: post #25

I'm using my own domain for e-mail, but obviously I need another e-mail for registrar, hoster, etc. I used to use gmail for that, but recently switched to icloud as I thought gmail is too dangerous with Google banning people around. Seems Apple's no better. I have no idea how to untangle this dependency chain. I'm using registrar in my country, so if everything goes wrong, I can just contact them with my ID and hopef…

Fastmail is the best email provider in its own right, plus it's not Apple or Google. Their support is extremely responsive, even in technical matters.

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#107

Post by highwaylights »

Wool2662 wrote: post #79
spike021 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that? All my contacts can be stored locally, photos backed up both on my computer and to a separate service plus iCloud, it's pretty easy to set up Dropbox or Box in-place of iCloud Files. Apple Wallet is handy but it really just stores digital copies (over-simplifying) of my physical cards, any of which I can request a replacement for outside Apple. I don't use Safari but if I did any of its bookmarks/history…

Yes, you can do this with considerable effort. But the moment you use OIDC with Apple ID there is a good chance you will lose many of the accounts created this way.

OIDC is the one part of this that really is an outsize problem.

I’d say email providers are an even bigger problem though. Good luck getting your accounts back if you lose access to your own email account. I don’t know that iCloud mail is particularly popular, but the risk really applies to any provider.

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#108

Post by nativeit »

sammy2255 wrote: post #68
newrotik wrote: post #49

Only tangentially related, but I have been trying to enroll for Apple's developer program for almost 3 months now. Understanding what the problem is is essentially impossible. Going to a physical store doesn't help, calling their customer service has them telling you to go to www.apple.com/support (???), and writing for support has them rotate you through 4 different, and decreasingly useful, representatives. The las…

Register yourself as a company

This requires a Dun & Bradstreet DUNS ID number, which isn’t the most difficult thing in the world to obtain, but also isn’t trivial, especially if you don’t actually have any formal business documents.

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#109

Post by orf »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #53
vondur wrote: post #8

Happened to me today. First got the message on my computer that my location was unknown and needed to enter a code from the phone. By the end of it, I had to reset my Apple password. No idea why it happened.

Didn't someone discover the unpachable NSA backdoors in the M series processors recently? Could be related.

No?

Re: Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

#110

Post by yayr »

Wool2662 wrote: post #79
spike021 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that? All my contacts can be stored locally, photos backed up both on my computer and to a separate service plus iCloud, it's pretty easy to set up Dropbox or Box in-place of iCloud Files. Apple Wallet is handy but it really just stores digital copies (over-simplifying) of my physical cards, any of which I can request a replacement for outside Apple. I don't use Safari but if I did any of its bookmarks/history…

Yes, you can do this with considerable effort. But the moment you use OIDC with Apple ID there is a good chance you will lose many of the accounts created this way.

The effort is actually minimal. Just export the passwords occasionally and save it in an encrypted file. 30 seconds

The issue is rather, that most people rely on these convenient services 100% and dont (want to) think about what happens in a bad case scenario.

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