alt Hacker News>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.
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> If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards
You'd think so. Yet, the stories of PayPal locking up payouts to surprised people keep coming every year - and people still use them.
I'm the author of that Reddit post. I should probably update it to clarify that I didn’t just purchase the gift cards, but also redeemed them. I don’t think it was purchasing them that triggered the lock on my Apple account. I mean, after all, how would they know what my Apple account is until they’re redeemed?
> 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.
If you are trying to be a bad person you could weaponize that approach. You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o
It seems you haven't learned the whole lesson. You're close, though. If you're going to be skittish, there's a better and easier set of rules. Don't use anything that involves an Apple ID.
> such as the $249 ISSEY MIYAKE knit sock
I mean that is a problem in itself :D
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.