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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

#131

Post by TekMol »

As someone using Linux to build web applications, I wonder what about the Apple ecosystem could make it worth to have such a Damocles’ sword hanging over me my whole life.

Am I missing something? My current perspective is that not only am I free of all the hassle that comes with building for a closed ecosystem, such as managing a developer account and using proprietary tools, it also comes with much harder distribution. I can put up a website with no wait time and everybody on planet earth can use it right away. So much nicer than having to go through all the hoops and limitations of an app store.

Honest question: Am I missing something? What would I get in return if I invested all the work to build for iOS or Mac?

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

#132

Post by kstrauser »

aengelke wrote: post #116
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.

My coworkers report these to me every single business day. They’re usually like:

> Hey, it’s me, your CEO. I’m in a meeting with our big customer and I need an urgent favor. Thanks! You’re a life saver.

> - Mr. CEO

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

#133

Post by snowe2010 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #108
firecall wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One rather counter intuitive way to “backup” your photos is to install Google Photos and One Drive on your iPhone! Google and MS don’t charge as much as Apple for storage, and you probably need you need to pay beyond the free limits, but it’s not a huge expense. Once your installed Google Photos and One Drive on your iPhone, just tell the apps to sync all your photos all the time! Now I appreciate that isn’t for ever…

The issue with OneDrive is that it doesn’t store metadata like the photo location, its damn near useless. But I do pay for storage for Google Photos and iCloud. If you take all of your photos from your phone, you don’t need your Mac at all. Google Photos will sync directly. I wouldn’t use BackBlaze (the $7 a month service). It doesn’t support NAS at all and it has to phone home every 30 days or it will erase anything…

Backblaze doesn’t erase after 30 days… I’ve had a computer be offline from it for several months and it still retained all data. And you can use the backblaze docker container to run on a NAS, much much much cheaper than B2.

Wasabi is much cheaper than AWS as well.

Finally the best solution for backing up your iCloud Photos is definitely Immich. Set it up on your own NAS or a VPS, back up to that, and then back up that server to an S3 storage using rsync or restic. I’ll note that I still backup to Backblaze because its so dang cheap.

I spent months trying to find the best setup a few months ago and this is by far the cheapest.

But still, this shouldn’t be required for normal people. They should get what they pay for.

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

#135

Post by snowe2010 »

redrove wrote: post #79
geekologist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

immich is an extremely polished, FOSS alternative to google/apple photos. It's an investment, but a 4 bay NAS running immich should do nicely. Additionally I backup snapshots to Backblaze B2 via restic which runs another $5/TB

For me personally Immich is a non-starter because its not end-to-end encrypted.

Why would you need it to be end to end encrypted anyway? You’re running it. Set it to only upload photos when you’re on your home network and you’re fine. Or fork it and make a PR and make it e2e encrypted.

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

#136

Post by 14 »

I hope you get it back. I always had the mindset that if I am a paying customer that this type of situation is very unlikely. But you are literally a massive paying customer and you got hit. The truth is you are just a nobody even as a customer who has dumped thousands of dollars as a loyal supporter. Showing up on HackerNews is a positive thing as the only way to get any traction in these situations is either be famous and complain or your story going viral and someone with power seeing your plea. I worried about only having a physical copy of my family photos so started paying apple for some storage. This type of event worries me. Good reminder to have multiple backup solutions.

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

#137

Post by scoot »

cemoktra wrote: post #73
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…

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

That doesn't explain why an entire account is shut down, rather than just use of gift cards. Hammer to crack an egg, and just plain lazy/incompetent

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

#138

Post by christoph »

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…

I think we must have passed peak Apple this week or something…

I’ve had Clone Hero running badly on an ancient MacBook for my drums, so I decided to swap it out for an M1 Mini that was collecting dust on a shelf. I did a full erase, but I couldn’t get past its activation lock. At all.

This is a piece of hardware I purchased on my credit card, for my company, (luckily) linked to a phone number I control and an email address on a domain I can control, but Apple in their infinite wisdom are still locking me out of my own hardware because I don’t know the password the last employee used on the computer! I don’t want any data off it, thats gone, I just want the computer I spent money on to actually be usable!

I initiated a “recovery” process to unlock it (at Apples discretion?) and they’ve sent me an automated email saying the initial checks are passed and they will contact me again in 7 calendar days. Kafka-esque doesnt even begin to describe it. So for the next week I have to whistle Dixie!

I’ve been a massive Apple fanboy since I swore off Windows a couple of decades ago, giving them a decent high 6 figure spend over that time and influencing countless others to buy Apple devices. Well that very much ended this week & going forwards without Apple will be painful, but the message they sent me couldn’t have been any louder & clearer. The writing has been slowly creeping on to the wall for the last few years, between buckling to UK government pressure, the CSAM photo scanning nonsense, the absolute UI abomination of this new glass crap, this was my final straw.

I’m also going to be relaying their “message” very clearly and loudly now to any friend or family member considering another Apple device.

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

#139

Post by kstenerud »

These online storage services like iCloud and Google Drive are, and always have been, a trap.

They feel convenient, but they will keep changing their TOS to disadvantage you further and further as time goes on.

Everything you upload is scanned into their AI to create a profile about you that they can then exploit (once again, to your disadvantage). They do it despite regulations against it (Who's to say what they're complying with, deep in their complex data centers? Who's gonna even check? And how?) This is why online services that take control of your data are such gold mines (subscription fees, analytics, profiling, etc). They get you coming and going.

And of course, the account terminations: The earthquakes and "natural disasters" of the online world that destroy lives with no consequence or care.

When your data is not in your sole possession, you own nothing.

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

#140

Post by knallfrosch »

pfooti wrote: post #6

I have had an apple id problem myself, for the past N years. Mine is an old mac.com account, which has my Gmail address as the backup email (and the primary one now that mac.com isn't doing email anymore). Because of this, I cannot sign up for a new account with my Gmail (it is tied to the older mac.com account). I've managed to reset the password, but I must answer a security question to log in. I mean, I answered t…

It doesn't sound like you use your old Apple account. Why don't you abandon it and use a new one?
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