this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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409
An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card (www.techradar.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
113 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

"I wouldn't like to be caught without a second backup." -- Miles Edward O'Brian, Chief of Operations, Deep Space Nine. ("The O'Brian Principle").

"" -- Every free software advocate who has been on about this during the entire past 20 years and up to twice that, warning us about these kind of things.

Either the user controls the...

or, OP article story.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

I'm kind of confused why someone would try to pay for an ongoing cloud subscription by buying a $500 gift card.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 points 3 hours ago

sometimes stores have sales that includes gift cards so you can get $500 of apple credit for 20% off

[–] IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

Maybe recruiter referral reward. They sometimes pay in gift cards.

[–] paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 hours ago

Without reading the article, my guess would be a Christmas/birthday gift to them.

[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 10 points 5 hours ago

Part of me is glad the liabilities of trusting these companies with the history of your life are validated. If you don't control access, you don't own it.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 16 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine having all your important data in just one place.

[–] AnunnakiTrumpCard@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

/c/Selfhosted

[–] rarbg@lemmy.zip 7 points 6 hours ago (2 children)
[–] AnunnakiTrumpCard@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Thank you. Still getting used to this Lemmy World business.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 53 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

How many cases like this aren't making the news? There are probably thousands of people who depend on Apple or Google or Dropbox and are suddenly locked out with no options.

[–] KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

I've seen a handful of stories about Apple and Google locking people out of their entire digital lives. I think the reason people seem not to care is that most people don't have the mental bandwidth to go against the grain and move their entire lives off of Apple and Google services, especially when they bought into these devices with the hope of making their lives easier.

Truly, most people don't realize how dependent they are on megacorps. I've been finding that out repeatedly over the last year. I thought I was good because I don't pay for streaming services, buy video games, or order Amazon delivery... then I took inventory and realized how much I actually relied on YouTube, Twitch, Google Drive, and GitHub.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 8 points 8 hours ago

I personally know somebody whose online Microsoft account got banned with no explanation.

[–] morto@piefed.social 98 points 12 hours ago (7 children)

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.

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

How long before an AI company buys all the hard drive supplies and foces us to use cloud storage?

[–] morto@piefed.social 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Cloud storage? Oh, that's the wrong mindset. With the "agi", you won't ever need to store data, because everything you need can be generated on-demand /j

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

gpt, play doom for me

[–] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 24 points 11 hours ago (8 children)

Cloud storage allows normal people to better realize a proper 3-2-1 backup strategy though, since it facilitates offsite storage.

That being said, my very important stuff is backed up to more than one cloud provider, just in case.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Cloud storage is fine for your offsite copy as long as you encrypt your data before uploading it. The problem is that a lot of people are using it as their only copy.

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 6 points 7 hours ago

I consider it insane to not retain a local backup of anything that is important.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 10 hours ago

Absolutely, then people go and delete the other copies leaving just the cloud, and think that it's somehow fine.

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[–] phaedrus@piefed.world 5 points 8 hours ago

In the general public's eye: convenience is literally everything

[–] ILoveUnions@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

Cloud storage is a good thing. Dependency on it is bad, and doubly so when it's large corpos

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Stupid people do stupid things. Like putting all apples in one basket.

Sometimes the lesson that needs to be learned in order to appreciate backups is hard...

[–] mint_tamas@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago

They have backups, that’s not the point. https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

Why isn't this posted in Leopards Ate My Face?

... this person... trusted... all their files... on someone else's computer?

... they... trusted a giant... tech corporation... to... care about them?

How is this person a developer?

Normally I'd say "clearly this person has never worked in software developement"... but apparently they have, and are just very naive?

... Maybe he just somehow never once spoke with someone who worked with databases ... ???

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago

He also says that he has backups, so "lost" seems a little apocalyptic. Hard to feel too bad for someone who is that invested in a corporation though.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I think you're forgetting that 90% of developers are barely competent at best.

If this upsets the reader and reader's a dev, remember I'm talking about the other people not you =)

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 3 hours ago

Yus.

I develop software.

I was not upset at that.

I know I'm in the 10%.

Not even barely competent.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 50 points 13 hours ago (6 children)

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, and also why even having a separate backup would definitely not fix their problem in the first place.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 49 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I think the root issue is still real:

  1. Person buys a gift card from a brick-and-mortar store
  2. Apple says its fraud
  3. Locks account and refuses to elaborate
[–] MudMan@fedia.io 21 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 hours ago

It's their fault for being born into a world where antitrust laws stopped being enforced a quarter of a century ago. They should do better.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 56 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

If it's not in your hands in an open format it's not yours.

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[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 129 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (10 children)

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.

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