An Apple fan who has spent “nearly 30 years as a loyal customer” says they’ve been “permanently” locked out of their Apple Account due to what might be the overzealous actions of Apple’s automated anti-fraud system. It’s left them locked out of “20 years of digital life,” and it all started with the seemingly straightforward purchase of an Apple gift card.
Friendly advice: never put your entire life in the hands of a corporation!
Also, the migration from local storage to the “cloud” was never a good thing for us, and the small gain in convenience wasn’t worth it, but most people don’t seem to realize that.
Not an “apple fan”, an apple-focuse software dev deeply embedded in their dev community.
Which I suppose goes a long way to explain them being multiple terabytes in the hole inside Apple’s ecosystem without a separate backup, but also why even having a separate backup would definitely not fix their problem in the first place.
I think the root issue is still real, regardless of how much koolaid this person drank.
- Person buys a gift card from a brick-and-mortar store
- Apple says its fraud
- Locks account and refuses to elaborate
Agreed 100%. I think it’s understandable to feel schadenfreude on someone this deeply embedded being bit by the arbitrary business practices of big corpo in a worst case scenario type of situation.
But the problem is the business practices, not the person being affected. The guy’s job feeding Apples gargantuan content engine doesn’t make this alright.
Still doesn’t explain why he didn’t have local backups of his important data. If you’ve had computers that long, and are a developer — you should know better.
You’d be amazed how many people are competent developers but have very little knowledge outside of what their job requires. I have friends in hiring positions and they see it all the time. Inflexible workflows and the complete inability to work if part of that workflow ceases to function are unfortunately common.
He doesn’t say he doesn’t, so I assume he does.
The problem is the way he got banned also blocks him from his shared auth, which in turn blocks him from purchases and device functionality:
The Damage: I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active “bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media. Apple representatives claim that only the “Media and Services” side of my account is blocked, but now my devices have signed me out of iMessage (and I can’t sign back in), and I can’t even sign out of the blocked iCloud account because… it’s barred from the sign-out API, as far as I can tell.
Seriously, it’s like a one page blog. You could have read it in the time it took you to make me read it for you.
Yeah, his photos and other content he generated may be retrievable via personal backups, but if he bought media or apps from Apple, those are unavailable if he’s not authenticated via Appleid, and if his devices can’t authenticate he is basically unable to use them for anything.
If it’s not in your hands in an open format it’s not yours.
The Terraria dev who had his Google account locked out because of whatever bullshit.
Don’t ever put anything secure/critical in places that aren’t yours.
Pretty much, I’ve been working on reducing my dependence on big tech companies by self hosting or using open source where possible. While impossible to do fully, at least if I lose an account things are either backed up or I’m only losing a small amount of my data.
Everyone always learns the hard way, just the same as I did - one copy is usually as good as no copies at all.
For data you can’t afford to lose, the 3-2-1 rule is king. Original, cold local, and remote.
If you do store your data, like me, in iCloud and Apple Photos then you should still take a backup.
The easiest way to do this to request a data export of all your Apple data. It’s then prepared into zip files you can download onto a local storage device.
I do it about once a year, which for me is a reasonable balance between risk and impact.
Here’s a guide: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/get-a-copy-of-your-apple-account-data/
You’re not wrong about anything you’re saying, but I’m learning that a LOT of people are either / or with phones and computers; I know fewer and fewer people who have both. Making a local backup is ideal, but many can’t or don’t have that option.
but I’m learning that a LOT of people are either / or with phones and computers;
My knee jerk reaction was to say something smart ass like “well they should get a computer” but you’re absolutely right.
The customer service woman I talked to was surprised I could talk to her and browse the internet (on a laptop). She told me most people use their phone for everything. I met college kids who were typing their papers on their phones. My mom never owned a computer until I gave her one, and she leaves it in the corner “for emergencies”.
I have no answer. People will continue uploading their lives into Google photos, Facebook galleries, whatever - with no backup, and hope those companies store their data. I think the average person is fucked.
My mom do bussiness and manage financial assets on a smartphone…
Phone literally old, laggy, half-dying, charging port is filled with dust… and also no backups…
lmfao
Of course, actual word documents and stuff and printing were done by me or my older brother
Agreed, but if the data is important, you need to pay another third party for backups. If something is important and you only have it stored once, that’s on you, no tech is infallable.
Their first party account is an interesting read and available on their blog here:
https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/The post was updated yesterday with the following:
Update 14 December 2025: Someone from Executive Relations at Apple says they’re looking into it. I hope this is true. They say they’ll call me back tomorrow, on 15 December 2025. In the mean time, it’s been covered by Daring Fireball, Apple Insider, Michael Tsai, and others, thanks folks! I’ve received 100s of emails of support, and will reply to you all in time, thank you. Finger’s crossed Apple calls back.
Second Update 14 December 2025: No luck so far, and not looking good. Anyone got a good lawyer to send them a letter and/or help me sue them? paris AT paris.id.au
Even if they get back and correct all this, I hope the author learns a lesson and begins exporting his digital footprint to other services.
It’s pretty clear he’ll go right back to Apple like a dog to vomit.
Uh … yeah, it’s his livelihood. He writes books on programming with Apple machines. Of course he’s still going to do the things he’s been doing his whole life.
Yeah - this really confused me. Why did they make a second update on the 14th when the first update said they’d hear back on the 15th?
He’s in Australia. It was already the 15th there when he posted that, but the person you’re responding to isn’t in Australia and the blog they copied and pasted from probably compensated for time zones.
Edit: Or it’s a typo from a stressed and frantic person.
I’ve been an Apple customer for 35 years. Had an Apple account as long as Apple has had such things. A few years ago (specifically, when Apple started retiring 32-bit apps from the App Store) I saw where Apple was going and created a dedicated account for my Apple ID that’s separate from the one I use for my contact for Apple services.
If Apple locked me out of my account today, I’d lose access to 14 years of app purchases on that account. That’s about it? And at some point I started using an alternative ID for some of my purchases, so I’d only lose access to some of them. And of course, I now keep copies of everything backed up, since they could vanish from Apple’s servers at any time.
You seem a bit dependent on a single provider. Maybe not putting your eggs in one basket might be better… Or two baskets, as it were, with eggs from the same chicken.
Apple is the only provider of Apple IDs.
Other yhan that, I’m not sure what gave you the impression I’m dependent on a single provider?
I’ve been an Apple customer for 35 years. Had an Apple account as long as Apple has had such things.
If Apple locked me out of my account today, I’d lose access to 14 years of app purchases on that account. That’s about it?
No reason.
That means they are only depending on apple for the one thing only apple provides, which is app purchases on the Apple platform. Everything else they have locally or backed up somewhere else. It’s literally their point that they’re independent despite having used the platform for so long.
Not the apps that came with it or the infrastructure that supports providing those apps to devices or the devices upon which those apps or services run?
Lol seriously…
It just works.
Automagiclly
I’m not blaming the guy, but he seems smart enough that he should have known better. Data isn’t secure if it’s in a single location, he gave up control and the inevitable happened.
I do not trust anyone with my data, the more important, the more sure I am that I have copies in several locations, including ones that are entirely in my control. My photos exist on multiple devices, cloud, my selfhosted immich server and my offline backup. Same with documents and other important data. My ripped movie collection is not backed up since I have the physical media.
Do not give up control, the systems are all setup to give you the illusion of security, but then this kind of thing happens. Maybe I’m extra paranoid since I’ve been the victim of identity theft but I’m comfortable with my level of paranoia.
i think it’s easy to make comments like this from the peanut gallery, with the benefit of hindsight and a self-selected group of users who will agree. but Apple should be legally obligated to address this. the solution can’t be “this idiot didn’t spend his nights and weekends doing 3-tier backups and high availability infrastructure diversity!”; that’s not scalable. if we just accept that companies can do this, they will continue to. but this has been on the front page of HackerNews. it’ll probably make it to Tim Apple’s desk eventually, so we’ll see what shakes out.
Apple should have to address this but backups are ALWAYS the solution.
If he only saved on his hard drive and lost access we’d say it.
If he only saved on an external drive and lost access we’d say it.
If he only saved on a thumb drive and lost access we’d say it.
But for some reason he only saved on Apple’s servers and all of a sudden we aren’t supposed to say it?
No. Always make backups of important data. Always.
Hopefully Apple gives him access back but let this be another reminder to everyone to never allow for one point of failure for your irreplacable data even if it’s a big corporation.
i guess in these situations i think of my aunt, who is in her 80s. she has an iPhone. should she buy a NAS and host Immich? i don’t think “make backups” is the simple advice it appears to be for the vast majority of people
Yeah, it’s better to take Apple to the grand jury. That will fly for sure.
sure, there’s reason to be cynical, but i don’t think handing society to fascists out of bleak pessimism is the way i want to live my life.
You’re right. It is easy to make these comments but it’s also a cautionary tale. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to use something within a “walled garden” but also retain ownership/access of it yourself.
Just having an external HDD for a backup goes a long way.
Same here.
I self host photo storage, which leaves originals untouched. It’s got a parity drive. There’s a hot spare. Every night it gets backed to up two different cloud providers that both host their own hardware, on two different continents (OVH, Germany and Backblaze, US East). The entire thing gets written to two offline disks every six months, for worm protection. I run recovery exercises a couple of times a year.
It would take a dinosaur killer asteroid for me to lose access to this data.
Imagine giving all that to Apple?!
I’m a little curious as to why they used a gift card and didn’t just pay with their own card. Seems a hassle to add the extra step.
Maybe they were gifted the gift card - Or they default to purchasing their Apple stuff using gift cards only because they don’t want their credit card data saved on Apples side. Who knows?
Yeah, there could be lots of reasons. I’ve gotten Apple GCs with cash back rewards from my credit card, for example.
Because it was a 500 dollar transaction and the card they purchased was an apple-branded product in a major retailer.
It was a 500 dollar transaction because this guy is a pro developer in Apple’s ecosystem and apparently uses a 6TB plan for both personal and professional storage.
The Trigger: The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan. The code failed. The vendor suggested that the card number was likely compromised and agreed to reissue it. Shortly after, my account was locked. An Apple Support representative suggested that this was the cause of the issue: indicating that something was likely untoward about this card. The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale), so if I cannot rely on the provenance of that, and have no recourse, what am I meant to do? We have even sent the receipt, indicating the card’s serial number and purchase location to Apple.Much as I do think mixing pro and personal accounts is a mistake, as a person who has to pay several major corpos for subscription plans for professional software that include cloud storage, I admit I get it. Receiving spam about how full your free personal Google Drive is kinda sucks extra if you are already paying a bunch for an enterprise account with a bunch of storage on the side.
It would honestly suck if everything you have is tied to one account.
Definitely a good lesson to has alternatives and back ups.
Having all my data stored with proprietary services is so nice, I don’t have to worry about anything.
/S
But that’s actually how the average idiot think.
What doesn’t add up to me is why he used a gift card instead of using credit. I suspect that there is more going on here.
Huh, the ransomware-ish features all locked out “ecosystems” put you through are fruitful. Don’t worry, as long as it works for the 99% of their clients, business as usual. Luckily, this guy recovers access to his account and if he is smart enough, he won’t trust them ever again. It’s sad this news won’t make a dent in the army of zombie consumers of Apple.
