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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

#391

Post by cosmic_cheese »

immibis wrote: post #262
plutokras wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why my friends and family think gifting a less liquid form of money is better than just giving cash. Gift cards are the best proof against the existence of the homo economicus, that's for sure.

Same reason they gift you a book instead of a can of petrol. By giving you a gift card, they're forcing you to buy something sold at a specific store chain, not to buy more petrol.

It can also be a way to make sure e.g. “fun money” gifts are actually spent as intended, getting around things like sense of responsibility, overbearing spouses, etc making the recipient feel obligated or pressured to spend it some other way.

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

#392

Post by darrmit »

This is horrible and a big reason why I refuse to go “all in” on Apple, Google, or Microsoft (among other reasons). Apple is the one I’m closest to given my hardware, though.

Given how invested you are in the Apple ecosystem I can’t fathom why you would go get an Apple Gift Card from a store to do this kind of transaction, though. It wouldn’t even cross my mind to do it that way.

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

#393

Post by monerozcash »

dnet wrote: post #363
monerozcash wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At the same time, AML solutions tend to be a closely guarded black box which simply tells you to block a customer, finding out why is pretty difficult. For a good reason! You, as a rule, really don't want to tell the customer why you're blocking them. What will happen in the end is that you will be facing federal charges for assisting the money launderers because you kept telling them what they're doing wrong.

See https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563 > This is the same failure mode of all security-through-obscurity. Secrecy means that bad guys are privy to defects in systems, while the people who those systems are supposed to defend are in the dark, and can have their defenses weaponized against them.

I don't disagree, but still think it's better to do as the lawyers tell you to.

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

#394

Post by akho »

snowe2010 wrote: post #141
aurareturn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has over a billion users. Do you expect every single one of them to learn how to do backups, protect their purchase on iOS, etc.?

Yeah literally the exact same thing can happen on android and windows. The solution is regulation, not ridiculous solutions like telling billions of people to back up their own stuff.

What's your proposed regulation?

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

#395

Post by cube00 »

monerozcash wrote: post #283
subscribed wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had Amazon close my old, almostt-unused account in Amazon-in-another-country because I dared to add a new payment method. I proved them who I am, that the new payment method (virtual card from a well-known organization) is mine, everything. After lots of back-forth I've been informed their decision is final. I HAVE NOT BREACHED TOS. I wish I has a major law company behind me to force them to admit that. Very happy…

Emailing jeff@amazon rapidly solved the problem for me when I was in the exactly same situation. Of course it'd have been nicer to tell them to fuck off, but living without Amazon would simply be far too inconvenient.

For all the negative press he gets and the way he treats his workers I'm surprised he still has resources allocated to handle complaints sent to his inbox.

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

#396

Post by IshKebab »

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…

You can probably use a GDPR personal information request to get photos and data at least. Doesn't help with other stuff you've paid for though.

We really need laws for this sort of thing. They should have included it in the DMA for gatekeepers.

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

#397

Post by windexh8er »

Nevermark wrote: post #390
dariosalvi78 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even better advice: Don't buy Apple.

This isn’t a solution for many people. And in fact, a prohibition is never a solution, it is a reduction in solution options And this advice takes into account exactly zero aspects of the particular problems a given person may have to solve, besides “problems with Apple”, in a world where most people have “problems with X” for each of the few large ecosystems. Freedom of choice would mean for N choices, being able to…

But it is a solution. Apple being a poor stuard of their customers is indicative that people buying their hardware and software are not their priority. Apple support used to be stellar, they used to care about customers, they no longer do.

Apple's ToS should be readily indicative of anyone using any of their products that Apple's perspective is that you don't own anything and they can do whatever they want with anything you do with their products. As the author points out you clearly don't own free access to what you've purchased.

The last thing I'll say is that it is fantastic advice to not purchase Apple in 2025. You can only be certain that this won't happen if you avoid them. I actually own a MPB, with receipts from purchase, that I had to purchase a bypass for when the device was enrolled in MDM by a family member that Apple has MDM locked and refuses to remove from iCloud.

Avoid Apple, that's the best advice. If you can't avoid Apple, minimize your footprint and make sure you're a good boy or girl else Tim Cook will steal from you and hide behind some bullshit first line support tar pit and an army of lawyers if you do happen to decide to threaten them.

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

#398

Post by alper »

jasode wrote: post #239
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…

>It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. It's also the buying of gift cards that can get Apple accounts locked: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/r8b1lu/apple_will_pe... If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans. - Don't give Apple gift cards to family and friends: You're potenti…

It’s against money laundering. Onerous regulations being interpreted highly defensively create these kind outcomes.

Neither the people creating the legislations nor the people at Apple responsible for these flows care very much about collateral damage.

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

#399

Post by maccard »

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…

> That almost sounds like some sort of AI, not a human

It’s almost certainly not, it’s just humans being human and going off script. I worked in a place where we dealt with an enormous number of customer service requests, and one of our measured support metrics was “how often do the agents deviate from what they’re allowed to offer”.

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

#400

Post by cheschire »

viktorcode wrote: post #180
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? Most likely stolen cards. Stolen credit cards are used to purchase gift cards which are then resold to unsuspecting buyers. Think of it as stolen money laundering.

I always wondered why sites like g2a sell gift cards at a price higher than the gift card is actually worth.

A lot of things are clicking into place for me in this thread.

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