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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#291

Post by Workaccount2 »

II2II wrote: post #234
EvanAnderson wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with fraudsters should be baked into the cost of doing business for these megacorps. A smaller business couldn't get away with this kind of "support". The largest companies should be held to the same standard. The only way this is going to change is if shareholders hold executives accountable. Consumer protection regulation with real "teeth" that impacts the bottom line will bring angry shareholders to the ta…

Then you better be prepared to pay for it, and still expect cases where things go wrong. The problem with having support dealing with problems like this is that fraudsters will figure out how to manipulate it, while honest people will still encounter these problems. The easier you make it for honest people to resolve these disputes, the easier you will make it for fraudsters since it would involve yet another avenue…

This is exactly how SIM swapping scams worked.

Scammers would call into Teleco customer service with panic and tears to trick the support person into moving your phone number onto their device, and then they drain your SMS 2FA accounts.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#292

Post by zem »

the combination of single account for everything and arbitrary account locking is really scary, given how much of their lives people entrust to these services. anecdotally i have steered strictly clear of google cloud for my personal projects (even though i have some cases where firebase would have worked nicely) because i cannot risk some screw up locking me out of gmail.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#293

Post by array_key_first »

astrange wrote: post #157
isodev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has created an entire programming language (Swift) as part of their "marketing toolbox". > genuinely serious about preserving user privacy Nope, not anymore. That ship has sailed and more revenue is to be made by harvesting user data

"Harvesting user data" doesn't make money. The reason people think this is that on HN people have main character syndrome that makes them think their personal data is interesting, plus an assumption that making money is evil therefore anything you can think of that is evil would make money. (Google and Facebook don't make money by "harvesting" or "selling" user data, they make webpages you spend a lot of time on then…

Pretty much nobody's personal info is valuable by itself, but it's EXTREMELY valuable in aggregate, because it lets you target advertisement. Like, so valuable it's on the order of tens of billions.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#295

Post by venturecruelty »

crazygringo wrote: post #95
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…

Usually I'm not a big fan of legislation, but in this case I completely agree. Companies unilaterally taking away anything you've paid for is effectively no different from theft, and ToS shouldn't be able to escape that. Or even if it's a free service but it's something you've built up value in -- a history of photos, messages, emails, etc. -- it's similarly effectively theft. I agree there absolutely needs to be a f…

Legislation is how we hold the powerful to account, ideally. It turns out, when people have billions of dollars, sometimes you have to stand up as a society and tell them "no".

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#296

Post by venturecruelty »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #65
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 real problem are shameless shitheads that will abuse anything to any length the run scams or malware distributions. " Yes support tech, please understand my child just died of cancer and my wife in a car accident last week and the only pictures I have of them are on my bitcoin4free@gmail.com account! " Google probably also bans thousands of accounts a day. And suddenly every single one of them needs a full h…

"We can't be fair or impartial because scammers lol. Sorry!"

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#297

Post by autoexec »

TuringNYC wrote: post #242
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…

This article alone is grounds for me to never, ever use Apple gift cards -- just by virtue of all the personal photos, etc that I've entrusted to iCloud.

The real wisdom to take away from this is that you need to keep copies of everything you've ever entrusted to iCloud because iCloud cannot be trusted. This was one instance where a giftcard seems to have caused someone to lose access to their stuff, but there's nothing stopping some other random thing fully outside of your control from causing Apple to kick you out of the things you've given them to keep for you.

Everything in the cloud is at risk of being taken from you. Companies like Apple are not your friend. They explicitly make no promises and insist that they are not accountable/liable. Stop trusting them.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#298

Post by bookofjoe »

al_borland wrote: post #287
pmahoney wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus they get to keep the balance that people forget to redeem I'm not an expert here, but this is not generally true. See "giftcard escheatment laws". I think these vary by state, but see e.g. https://legalclarity.org/when-do-gift-cards-become-subject-t... The value of abandoned cards goes to the state.

Some states have laws that gift cards never expire, like California. A lot of companies will just go with the most strict rule, rather than micromanaging state by state. The side effect of this is the company "keeps" the money that isn't spent. It may be earmarked at gift card money, but it will never be spent. I am terrible at spending gift cards. I have some that are from 2007, 18 years old. Two years ago I decided…

Cash trumps gift cards every time.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#299

Post by bitpush »

rchaud wrote: post #284
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as they are both in the advertisement business Apple isn't. Just sayin'. They are trying to do it, but they aren't really anywhere near the scale of Google and Facebook. They make money ( lots of money) by selling high-margin hardware, and, to some extent, digital media, on that hardware. Currently, Apple is genuinely serious about preserving user privacy. I realize that can change, in the future, but it's the way…

Apple's ad business is estimated to be at $6.5 billion annually as of 2024[0]. Since then, they've decided to bring ads to Apple Maps. And of course there was the infamous ad for some movie on Apple TV injected into Apple Wallet earlier this year. Just because they're not Google's size doesn't mean they don't have people making product decisions that will eventually sacrifice privacy for profits. [0] https://digiday.…

It hurts my brain that people still parrot the fact that "Apple doesnt do ads". As you rightly point out, Ads for Apple is a multi-billion dollar business, bigger than many other ad networks, and ad exchanges.

The reality distortion field is strong, even with some HNers.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#300

Post by arjie »

Huh, interesting. Well, the only reasonable thing to do is to tell everyone that Apple gift cards are unsafe. I probably will do this. The problem with the “only buy from Apple Store” is that the recipient cannot ask for the source of the purchase without looking a bit ungracious.

So a blanket ban on Apple gift cards is probably the safest thing. I shall inform everyone in my extended family.

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