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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#341

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

dpark wrote: post #192
hamdingers wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I previously worked in fraud/risk at a major ecommerce platform. On my biggest day I closed 60,000 accounts. In one day. I knew other agents who'd done 10x that. The scale of this work is unfathomable to those who have only been on the consumer side of it. #1 is doable but would destroy our ability to combat fraud. "Here's how not to get banned next time" is not an email anyone in this space would consider sending. #…

This is not what small claims court is for. You can go to small claims court and successfully convince a judge that Apple or Google or whoever owes you $500 for shutting down your account. You cannot go to small claims and get a court order that Apple must reinstate your account.

That is something that laws can (and should) change. It doesn't have to be small claims court, it can be "big tech appeals court" or whatever.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#343

Post by arcfour »

SoftTalker wrote: post #128
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 doesn't scale. If you guarantee access to a human, the system will absolutely be effectively DoS'd by scammers trying to social engineer their way into access to someone's account.

Not if you require physical presence. If you have to turn up in person at a local branch office with identifying documents, then you've greatly limited opportunities for scams. Fraud is still possible but it doesn't scale.

You are suggesting that companies be legally required to staff a "Complaint Bureau" where low-level employees must face, in person, the most disgruntled and potentially unstable 1% of the internet. This can only end well.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#344

Post by fencepost »

mrguyorama wrote: post #244
notatoad wrote: post #181

I understand why Apple sells gift cards. I understand why brick and mortar stores sell gift cards for third parties like Apple. But what do the credit card companies get out of this arrangement? It seems like they’re taking on a whole lot of unnecessary risk and enabling these scams by allowing third party gift cards to be purchased using a credit card.

Hello, I work for a major gift card company. These views are my own and not that of my employer. The credit card companies take zero risk in this transaction, because we, the company selling the gift card, take the risk. To this end, my personal job is building systems to prevent and combat credit card fraud. It's not terribly complicated in fact. The team I originally started with a decade ago was like three people.…

Are you able to track balance checks made against card numbers not yet activated? That seems like it'd be a dead giveaway for physically tampered cards and if you could prevent activation of those it'd at least make tampered cards harder to use.

Presumably you could also take things back to the level of "store X, you have a serious problem."

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#345

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

arcfour wrote: post #338
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…

If Google bans 100,000 bot accounts a day, and even 1% of those "users" request a human appeal, you are demanding 1,000 hearings every 24 hours. Who pays for this? Magic? If the cost of providing a "free" email account includes the potential for a $500 human-led legal adjudication, free accounts will simply cease to exist. Further, the current court system is already backlogged by months or years for serious crimes a…

> Who pays for this?

Initially, the user requesting the hearing (this discourages the scammers).

When the appeal is won, the company (this encourages doing a really good job at not banning legit users and enabling lower-friction ways for them to appeal).

> You are suggesting we socialize the cost of private customer service disputes.

No, it can just be a dedicated body, funded as described above. Yes, this might mean that free accounts cease to exist, although I suspect in practice it would just result in a fraction of the profit from free accounts going into better (less user-hostile) abuse management rather than profit.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#346

Post by llbbdd »

ragazzina wrote: post #327
SXX wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve get no fees from non-Steam key sales and developers can really request any reasonable amount of keys so tens and hundreds of thousands. It make a lot of sense to discount all these reviews to avoid abuse. A lot of developers would abuse reviews hard otherwise.

Why are hundreds of thousands keys a reasonable amount for a developer? I am not in the video game business so I fail to see the use case.

Developers can sell those keys outside of Steam and they are redeemable for a copy of the game on your Steam library.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#347

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

benced wrote: post #241
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…

This legislation has high costs and while it seems fair to impose them on the Apples and Googles of the world, this gets weirder with smaller services that might have trouble complying. My podcast player, Overcast (overcast.fm), is one guy. Should he be subject to this? It seems like that business might not be able to exist if he was. You could do a revenue threshold or something but seems tricky.

> You could do a revenue threshold or something but seems tricky.

That's what countries regulating this tend to do (often user count instead of revenue thresholds, but similar).

It also makes sense, because if the podcast guy bans you, you can pick a different podcast player or just not listen to podcasts. If both Google and Apple ban you, you're also effectively debanked because you can't use their app stores to install the banking authenticator app that is required to use online banking, possibly excluded from using public transit, etc.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#348

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

philistine wrote: post #184
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…

I'm flabbergasted by #3. Where in the world is there no small claims court exactly like you describe? I'm genuinely curious.

My impression (possibly wrong) is that in Germany, there is just "court" and trying to enforce a $500 judgement will be difficult because every lawyer will tell you to just eat the cost rather than taking the case, and the case would cost thousands to litigate (to be reimbursed by the company if you eventually won, 5 years later).

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#349

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

arcfour wrote: post #343
SoftTalker wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you require physical presence. If you have to turn up in person at a local branch office with identifying documents, then you've greatly limited opportunities for scams. Fraud is still possible but it doesn't scale.

You are suggesting that companies be legally required to staff a "Complaint Bureau" where low-level employees must face, in person, the most disgruntled and potentially unstable 1% of the internet. This can only end well.

That actually sounds good to me.

If this place attracts violence, the company can afford bulletproof glass and an alarm button that alerts the police, and I'd rather have the unstable 1% remanded to police at the risk and cost of a rich company than to have them stab a rando on the street later.

Employee protection laws that mandate said bulletproof glass in certain situations already exist in civilized countries.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#350

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

rsync wrote: post #337
eCa wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do create an ephemeral Apple ID every time I get a new phone In other words, you do have an in-use apple id at (pretty much) all times.

Sure, but it has no value and nothing negative happens if it is revoked. Further: the three apps I install are not crucial - I could live just fine without them. All I really need is Safari and a working POTS endpoint for my cloud-hosted phone number ...

Curious: How do you do your banking? Most of my banks de-facto require an Android or iOS app for authentication, unless you want to do all your banking in person and pay hundreds of Euros in fees every month (and even that would exclude you from many services).
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