alt Hacker NewsIt'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 so they're not tied to my personal. At least it can minimize the damage somewhat.
It sucks that I have to take all these extra precautions though. It's definitely made me develop a do not trust any big corp mindset.
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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 it was my almost unused account, heavily went down with my purchases in mt main account (in my usual country of residence) as well.
And yes, I use login-with-companyName as sparingly as possible. We are not the users, we're beggars.
Not only local copies but also at least own and use one device where you have your important data that is not on the same OS ecosystem as the other device(s) - also helps with things like 2FA, password manager, etc., if shit has hit the ceiling fan on the other device.
In addition, I always suggest people to:
- Not use big tech's cloud services - ever
- But if you must, do not use many cloud services from just one provider (i.e no Google everything, no iCloud everything) i.e stop using "one account gateways".
- Needless to say, it's time you had a domain and start paying for mail hosting (at least for critical stuff - you can actually buy a very cheap plan; and use that gmail/live-hotmail/yahoo/iCloud/whatever everywhere else) [0]
- Keep an offline (but safe) copy of your "most" important data [1] and ways to remember (i.e cryptic hints) for your "most" important passwords
- Gain some experience in fighting in consumer courts/forums (depending upon your country) - start early, start with e-com companies. A lot many times we don't put up a fight because we have never done it before and we give up always because every time it's a first time. Apple and Google make a mockery of consumers everywhere because we have allowed them to. In fact sometimes when we talk of lack of accessible support at Google and Apple (yes, Apple) we speak in a disdainful appreciation or awe :)
[0] Some might disagree but disabling (or dev/nulling in a way) mail@, hi@, contact@, sales@ etc on your domain (esp. if you have catch-all enabled) goes a long way in terms of avoiding spam
[1] It's also very important to have a tiered approach to data storage and backup strategies. There should be a very, very, very small subset of your personal data, including some of your photos and videos, that is really, really small in storage footprint that you can back up/sync to multiple locations and actually pay the full price for it at storage costs via your own setup, preferably using FOSS tools (which are becoming too good these days) out there.
I don’t mean to defend this, but I know from experience that gift cards are frequently used for money laundring. The laws against that are very strict, incentivizing companies to overshoot and block false positives.
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.
To add more to the problem, some anti money Landry solutions are … AI powered.
Unfortunately, when you access multiple accounts from the same set of IP addresses and browser signatures, you can bet Google, Apple, Microsoft, and any other large company with that level of information collection has probably correlated all of those accounts to you. The company may lock them all if any one of them is suspected of "bad behavior".
> 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 created a Google developer account with a separate email due to warnings like this. Then Google closed it because I left it idle too long and I didn't get the warning email. Sometimes you can't win.
It genuinely makes me a little anxious whenever I come across people whose entire digital lives are dependent on a google/apple account. Just one misstep and it's all gone
Well from my view as European working in finance. Handling money for customers to pay (buy apps) likely requires an e money license (not sure about other states). And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not. So disabling the account might be due to regulations required for the e money license.
Of course Support should be able to resolve this if proves are given
> what’s the rationale
Their mega high risk - high value gift cards are effective for laundering stolen/fraudulent credit cards. Buy a $500 gift card with a stolen CC and sell it on FB marketplace for $400 - you’re up $400, the buyer saves $100, Apple get paid by the retailer and the CC company are (likely) on the hook.
Of course the actual solution here is _don’t sell high value gift cards_, or require the Apple ID email at time of purchase/activation of the card
It would make more sense to stop offering gift cards, which make zero financial sense for the consumer, but why stop offering a lucrative product that people buy because they're bad at logic, when you can just shut down accounts and greatly inconvenience people at no cost to you?
> What's the rationale?
Gift cards are used by phishers. In our institution, we routinely get personalized spam mails (in the name of the corresponding group lead of the recipient, sent via GMail -- this is not low-effort) that ask whether they are available and, when (accidentally) responding, ask for Apple gift cards.
> It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale?
If I need to guess, gift cards are sold online in money laundering schemes, also on some platforms they are used to let you buy apps from a lower priced country
Selling gift cards is like borrowing money at 0% interest. And because some people forget and never use them, it's negative interest.
anything can trigger this. it is totally at the company's discretion
The real problem is that all these big tech companies have a callcenter in India with agents who cannot do anything to actually fix problems.
And some of them don't even have that!
Do not redeem /s
>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 potentially ruining the recipient's digital life if they redeem it.
- Don't buy Apple gift cards: You risk ruining your own digital life.
If you've been given an Apple gc for Christmas -- and you have paranoia of the risks -- don't buy anything online that's tied to your Apple ID. Instead, go to the physical Apple store to redeem it. And don't buy an iPhone with it because that will eventually get assigned to an Apple ID. Instead, get a non-AppleID item such as the $249 ISSEY MIYAKE knit sock.
I have thousands of credit-card reward points that could be traded in for Apple gift cards but I don't do it because Apple's over-aggressive fraud tracking means Apple's store currency is too dangerous to use.