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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#361

Post by arcfour »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #358
arcfour wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...for a Gmail account. Right.

No, for the key to being able to participate in modern society. Without a Google account, you can't use (standard) Android. Without either (standard) Android or iOS, you de facto can't use most banks, some public transit networks, and various other utility-level services.

You can have a Yahoo account, a Hotmail account, a ProtonMail account. You can go to your bank in person or without an app. I would be less surprised to learn that a bank does not have an app than I would be to learn they do not have a website.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#362

Post by blturner »

freedomben wrote: post #8

Genuine question: if your Apple account is locked, and you're unable to create a new one, is your iPhone still usable?

This is one of the reasons the used market for Apple devices is absolutely fraught with danger. If an Apple ID is left active on the device, only Apple can reset it. In most cases, they will only do that if they are provided the original purchase receipt for the serial number associated with the device. So in theory, removing the activation lock from owned devices is possible in a situation where a locked apple ID cannot be recovered if you are the original owner. IMO, there should be a process to release devices that haven't been used for a certain amount of time AND haven't been reported stolen. But there's very little incentive for Apple to do this.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#363

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

arcfour wrote: post #361
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, for the key to being able to participate in modern society. Without a Google account, you can't use (standard) Android. Without either (standard) Android or iOS, you de facto can't use most banks, some public transit networks, and various other utility-level services.

You can have a Yahoo account, a Hotmail account, a ProtonMail account. You can go to your bank in person or without an app. I would be less surprised to learn that a bank does not have an app than I would be to learn they do not have a website .

The web site often requires an app for authentication. Some (not all) banks offer alternatives, which often come at a cost (either financial or time) that would, once you add all of the costs up, be catastrophic for the majority of people, because it's never one thing that is affected with these major gatekeepers.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#364

Post by tristor »

logifail wrote: post #278

I suspect the underlying problem is that the gap between legitimate use of gift cards and fraudulent use of gift cards is just not very large... Years ago I briefly played around with "manufactured spend" (on credit cards, to earn frequent flyer miles). There was one specific loophole, with one specific gift card provider, and it was a doozy. You could earn credit card points on spend, plus supermarket loyalty points…

> it dawned on me that what I was doing was basically indistinguishable from money laundering. Of course it was NOT money laundering

But it is money laundering, that's what manufacturing spend is. It's not money laundering to hide evidence of a crime, but it is money laundering for the purpose of hiding the fact that you didn't engage in commerce in the process of spending money on a credit card to earn a reward. It's indistinguishable, only because we criminalize behavior not only on its base but due to its intent.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#365

Post by the_pwner224 »

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.

Yeah, you need a much smaller number for e.g. giving access to journalists/media pre-release. But the key mechanism is also used for any legitimate sales or giveaways that happen outside the Steam platform.

If you buy a Humble Bundle, you get a set of Steam keys for the games in the bundle. If Intel/AMD/Nvidia are doing a promotion for a free game with a purchase of their product, they give you Steam keys. Etc.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#366

Post by arcfour »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #363
arcfour wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a Yahoo account, a Hotmail account, a ProtonMail account. You can go to your bank in person or without an app. I would be less surprised to learn that a bank does not have an app than I would be to learn they do not have a website .

The web site often requires an app for authentication. Some (not all) banks offer alternatives, which often come at a cost (either financial or time) that would, once you add all of the costs up, be catastrophic for the majority of people, because it's never one thing that is affected with these major gatekeepers.

They generally use SMS authentication. I have yet to see one that has a hard requirement for an app, let alone one that actually requires a Google account.

Regardless: The fact that a specific tool is the easiest way to do something doesn't grant you a "right" to that specific tool. For example, you have a right to seek transportation; you don't have a right to a specific 2025 Toyota Camry provided by a private company.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#367

Post by swat535 »

hamdingers wrote: post #143
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 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. #…

Imagine if banks worked like that.. it's "difficult" to scale is not an argument .

These companies are critical to people's livelihood in 2025 and they should be treated at such. Many people rely on them for their life, they store sensitive information and control communication.

I'm of the opinion that if a business can't provide adequate support at scale, then it should either stay small or cease operation.

Dealing with fraud is your issue and part of your business, not citizens.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#368

Post by the_pwner224 »

pjmlp wrote: post #203
sigseg1v wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. A situation similar to this happened to me with Steam over a payment issue with their service. They banned me even though I had thousands of dollars of games and an account since Sept 2003. I had to go to my bank and escalate multiple times to get letters providing the info steam wanted about my account and credit card to prove it was legitimate. Eventually after contacting them enough times they said they wo…

Which goes to show, being the nice Linux guys doesn't change they are a corporation like all others, and will behave exactly the same.

Afaik if your account is banned Valve still lets you log in to Steam and access your existing library of purchased games. You just lose access to all the other platform features. Obviously that's their policy that they can change anytime... but in this case, it's not inconsistent to their "nice Linux guys" persona.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#369

Post by swat535 »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #318
asadotzler wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are well regulated and will face meaningful consequences for getting this wrong with any regularity.

> Banks [...] will face meaningful consequences for getting this wrong with any regularity That's false, unfortunately. There's amazing levels of discretion that banks enjoy and minimal accountability to end users. The CFPB (in the USA, anyway) was a countermeasure but has been recently weakened.

The point is that you have more recourse when dealing with banks than you do with big tech thanks to legislation.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#370

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bitpush wrote: post #299
rchaud wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not that. Be as insulting as you wish, but this conversation shows that a significant number of folks simply can't understand any way to make money, except by harvesting and selling PiD.

Making and selling hardware is difficult. Really difficult, but some companies have been doing it successfully, throughout recorded history.

It's really strange to see it being dismissed as "impossible," nowadays.

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