Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 479 posts

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#411

Post by adastra22 »

Gareth321 wrote: post #396
adastra22 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only get 2.5% of their revenue from app store transactions.

I don't think this is correct. Analysts believe Apple made more than $27.39 billion in commissions globally last year ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/08/appfigures-apple-made-over... ). That's around 7% of global revenue, and we should expect this ratio to be higher this year and next.

My search of 2024 numbers stated. $10bn from App Store out of approx $400bn revenue. Which seem to be what is stated in the first tables in that link.

I’m not sure who is right, Apple or these analysts, but either way: 2.5% or 7%, that revenue source isn’t large enough to be a corrupting incentive on Apple’s behavior.

Maximizing digital service revenue at the cost of user trust which drives their high margin hardware sales would be killing the golden goose.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#412

Post by BobaFloutist »

zahlman wrote: post #165
wat10000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet they continue to sell these cards. Why? It's simple: they're essentially free money. The worst case for them is that the recipient of the card uses the full amount of the card. In that case, the issuer "only" makes the full profit on those sales. Often they do better: the card is used partially or not at all, then lost or forgotten about. You can see how lucrative they are by looking at promotions. You can of…

> Why would you sell a dollar for 90 cents? Because you know that on average you're selling quite a bit less than a dollar. There's more to it than covering the risk of fraud. It's more about optionality. The gift card only allows for buying things at one place — so you're restricted in what you can buy, can't deposit it at a bank, can't comparison shop etc. I don't get the sense that money being left on the card is…

You usually save at least 10% on giftcards at Costco, and often 20%.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#413

Post by refactor_master »

beeflet wrote: post #391
miki123211 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put this as plainly as I possibly can: 1. It is objectively true that Apple and Google accounts are extremely important to many people. 2. It is also objectively true that most users will only need one of each, a few at most. Fraudsters have no such limitations, and may want to create thousands of them per day if the possibility arises. 3. Therefore, it's likely that a significant percentage of all accounts ever c…

charge 5$ for the ability to send your first iMessage. problem solved.

So now every fraudster with $5 appears legitimate?

Remember blue check marks? The EU is not happy about those.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#414

Post by bcye »

refactor_master wrote: post #413
beeflet wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

charge 5$ for the ability to send your first iMessage. problem solved.

So now every fraudster with $5 appears legitimate? Remember blue check marks? The EU is not happy about those. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

They would appear no less legitimate then now?

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#415

Post by Artoooooor »

DannyPage wrote: post #14

> Update 18 December 2025: We’re back! A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to redeem, which did not work for me, and did not credit my account, was already redeemed in some way (sounds like classic gift card tampering), and my account was caught by that. Obvi…

4. Why locking account bricks any device? It should work without registering anywhere.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#416

Post by bsder »

Mistletoe wrote: post #16
srmatto wrote: post #10

This fiasco stirs up a lot of different topics for me, none of which seem like they are likely to be resolved anytime soon. First, with so much importance placed on an Apple/iCloud account in our current era it's not good that they can be shutdown so trivially. Someone can be shut out from using Messages, Apple Wallet, Digital Identification (depending on where they live) and all their subscriptions and media purchas…

I’m realizing maybe I should just use Amazon or iCloud AND Google Photos for backing up my images. My whole life is in Google Photos. I could lose it from something stupid and never even have a person to contact about that.

Immich. https://immich.app/

They have their issues, but they are actively working on it.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#417

Post by bitpush »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #370
bitpush wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here are the facts -

Apple makes tons (read: billions of dollars) from ads. Hence, Apple is in the business of ads, have sales people working with advertisers to make targeting, personalization work.

I take no side in "ads are bad" argument, but you have to accept that Apple is in the ads business, whether you like ads or not.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#418

Post by aranelsurion »

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

I don’t want to minimize the pain people experience here, but it’s worth calling out just how hard this problem is for retailers and issuers. Gift cards are the #1 fraud vector in payments ... because it lets stolen cards be converted into a cash-like equivalent with zero traceability. So fraud/risk system are highly sensitive to gift cards. It's not an excuse, but I see in this thread people minimizing the problem a…

Why not just ban the user from using gift cards then, instead of banning their entire account between 30 different products under the same company umbrella?

They don’t need to fix insecurity of gift cards, they just need better access controls. Yet they have no incentive right now to tackle that.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#419

Post by crazygringo »

metabagel wrote: post #137
crazygringo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Usually I'm not a big fan of legislation Corporations need to be heavily regulated. They won't just do the right thing for its own sake. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Corporation/Joel-...

I mean obviously that's what things like environmental and safety regulations are for, as well as things like antitrust. You have to set the "rules of the game."

I just mean that otherwise, usually competition ensures good outcomes for consumers, because the corporations that produce bad outcomes go out of business once consumers catch on.

But there are definitely exceptions, especially around rare events that are difficult to foresee or that can't reasonably be expected to be part of product comparison. The likelihood of your account being shut down without recourse and losing things you've paid for falls into that category perfectly. Predatory surprise fees with things like credit cards and bank accounts, and that change without warning, also fall into that. Also minimum warranties, since consumers can't easily inspect quality on the inside of a product.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#420

Post by aranelsurion »

fencepost wrote: post #279
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…

The solution should be obvious to everyone: Just go back to 2008 and start running a large Apple developer conference in your country. If you do that, it should only take a week or two to get your problem resolved. I'd say also that you should never purchase Apple gift cards from anyone except Apple directly, but if the card itself was tampered with (stolen, opened, scraped and code retrieved, re-covered with generic…

> I'd say also that you should never purchase Apple gift cards from anyone except Apple directly

This would be a good measure assuming we’ve fully discovered all the reasons Apple might ban you for, and only reason happens to be gift cards.

Since we don’t know what other seemingly trivial actions may provoke Apple to wipe an account, I think starting a developer conference is the only way to be safe.

Post reply on HN