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

hey.paris

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

#111

Post by NaOH »

jval43 wrote: post #86
sho wrote: post #23

Wow. This is a cautionary tale. I don't think I'd be as devastated as this poor chap, but as it grew I realize I've allowed my iCloud photo library to become a single copy. How are people handling this these days? If i wanted to ensure a full backup of everything on my iCloud to a NAS, what's the best way these days? Seems like they make it difficult by design..

I run a separate Mac Mini that has the full iCloud Photos library on a massive external drive, set to "Download originals". I then rsync that filesystem to a separate Linux box. This works but you must not ever disconnect the external drive. I don't have a solution for iCloud Drive, as there wasn't a keep offline setting last time I checked. So use it only ephemerally.

At least as of Sequoia, the Settings > iCloud > Drive > Optimize Mac Storage option enables iCloud Drive files to be stored offline. Likewise, right clicking any iCloud Drive files in the Finder includes a Keep Downloaded option. Since I minimally use iCloud Drive, in the past (older OSes) I also had Hazel make copies of iCloud Drive files so they were certain to be in backups.

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

#112

Post by compounding_it »

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…

> However you have to create a trust model where your fault allows you to have a service helping you with it while a fault at the service provider will allow you to restore data from your end too, getting the best of both worlds.

This is why I suggested to have a dual model. Leveraging the cloud and services is really a good choice as long as you have backup systems running independently as well. Your backups may not be as powerful and full fledged as the main provider but in case of emergencies like these, you still own your data and hardware and don’t panic.

In this example a weekly backup of iCloud to a drive connected to a pi with rsync could be a simple solution. 6tb is not even that much given that 500$ gift cards are being used by the author. The backup is not great but it is easy to see why it’s also necessary to own your data.

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

#113

Post by beeflet »

st3fan wrote: post #100
iamnothere wrote: post #2

This is one of the worst stories I’ve seen yet. It sounds like they were “all in” on Apple with zero backups, which shows some questionable judgment, but still, this sort of thing shouldn’t be possible any more than a bank deciding to take all your money with no recourse. (They can close your account, but they can’t keep your money.) Maybe hosts should be required to mail you a hard drive with your data on it when th…

Great victim blaming there buddy.

To what extent is the victim their own perpetrator? They allow the status quo to succeed by endorsing it. They voted for this with $30,000 of their own money, and they will likely vote again.

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

#115

Post by freddie_mercury »

kingleopold wrote: post #60
userbinator wrote: post #49

To paraphrase an old saying: Live by Big Tech, die by Big Tech. After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer I've heard others say this (and was a "loyal advocate" of Windows for around 2 decades myself), but the reality is they simply do not care. You are merely a single user out of several billion . Many of the reps I’ve spoken to have suggested strange things That almost sounds like some sort of AI, not a human. But…

with this same logic, you don't want to know how much your government and your country cares about you. odds are even a lot lower for them.

Why would my government care less about me than a multinational corporation with billions of customers that isn't headquartered or listed where I live?

My Member of Parliament represents about 130,000 people, does regular door knocking to talk to people, and has a staffed office a few km away the I can walk into anytime I want.

None of that applies to a multinational corporation.

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

#116

Post by aengelke »

x3sphere wrote: post #32

It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale? It would make more sense if they just locked the person out of redeeming gift cards or something, not the entire account. But reading horror stories like this is is why I only use the very bare minimum of any of these cloud services. Keep local copies of everything. For developer accounts, I always create them under a separate email…

> What's the rationale?

Gift cards are used by phishers. In our institution, we routinely get personalized spam mails (in the name of the corresponding group lead of the recipient, sent via GMail -- this is not low-effort) that ask whether they are available and, when (accidentally) responding, ask for Apple gift cards.

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

#117

Post by valleyer »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #29
valleyer wrote: post #12

Send this in an e-mail to tcook@apple.com. He has a team that reads for stuff like this and can magically fix issues. I've had to do it before, also for a gift-card-related problem (different from yours), and I was contacted by a member of the Apple executive escalations team a couple days later.

I don't see stories anymore from this working. Back when it was under Jobs, there were more concessions from his team operating the account. And maybe in the early Cook years. Apple has trimmed a lot of fat. I did read about part of the product development org having a standup about trending social media cases, and prioritizing followup on items that were under public scrutiny.

Mine happened earlier this year, FWIW.

Believe me, I have no desire to defend Apple. Their behavior absolutely sucks. I just want a good resolution for the author of this blog post.

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

#118

Post by bbbhltz »

monksy wrote: post #109
cemoktra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well from my view as European working in finance. Handling money for customers to pay (buy apps) likely requires an e money license (not sure about other states). And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not. So disabling the account might be due to regulations required for the e money license. Of course Support should be able to resolve this if proves are given

> And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not Whats coming?

Money laundering, I think.

AML = Anti Money Laundering

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

#120

Post by nine_k »

monksy wrote: post #109
cemoktra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well from my view as European working in finance. Handling money for customers to pay (buy apps) likely requires an e money license (not sure about other states). And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not. So disabling the account might be due to regulations required for the e money license. Of course Support should be able to resolve this if proves are given

> And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not Whats coming?

Anti Money Laundering measures.

Gift cards are often used for money laundering or scams, because they allow to transfer monetary value in small increments and without tracking: there's no link between the person who bought a gift card (anonymously with cash) and a person who used its code to put money onto an account.

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