JeroenDec 13
Khrys

So this is a good reminder : what ever you got on Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta & co is not your property. It is theirs.

And they can remove the whole of it in the flash of an eye for whatever reason appears to occur ⬇️

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple …

Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison
Dec 13 at 6:43amWeb
Show threadartlogDec 13
@Khrys
will be a useful illustration for self hosting interest
Show threadartlogDec 19
@Khrys

Mise à jour : https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/ (Update 18 December 2025)

La personne a récupéré son compte 5 jour après, le fait que l'histoire soit passé sur The Register et a fait du bruit doit avoir joué.
Tout redevient comme avant donc.

Y aura t'il une remise en cause pour la perte de contrôle face à ce géants ?
20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple …

Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison
Show threadAlexandre B A Villares 🐍Dec 13
@Khrys And this can happen with a Google account too, I've seen many reports... (Slightly different consequences, less hardware integration)
Show threadTravisDec 13

@villares @Khrys What always comes to mind is that dad that sent photos of his kid to his kid's pediatrician and Google flagged his account for CSAM, and even after the police cleared him, Google still refused to restore his account.... and he was so ingrained in the Google ecosystem, he was locked out of his phones, phone service (because he used GoogleFi) email, photos, documents...

There's a reason why all I want for Christmas are large capacity hard drives and a tape backup system. If Apple decides to lock me out for no reason, I still have my data. If Google decides to delete my Gmail account that is old enough to drink, no biggie. The biggest pain will be updating my email address everywhere.

The cloud is great, but unless you've got root and backups, you own none of your data. If I stopped paying my data center bill next month, I could confidently pop back up in a different data center and be back online without skipping a beat.

Show threadQuincy ⁂Dec 13

@Khrys

This makes the push to make us all dependent with our lives on these things ("smartphone" to replace ID cards etc.) all the more dangerous.

Show threadGeoffrey Arduini sur GoToSocialDec 13
@Khrys crazy story... I degoogled 4 months ago and taking back my google photos was a nightmare too. But now I am free. I hope he will do the same.

#NoLockIn #deBigTech
Show threadDavid HonessDec 13
@Khrys appalling behaviour from Apple IMHO, and a huge signpost to never put all your 🥚 in one 🛒
Show thread🌱🏴‍🅰️🏳️‍⚧️🐧🔧📎 AmbiyelpDec 13

@Khrys

Adapted from xkcd 743 "Infrastructures" https://xkcd.com/743/

> Check out this new itunes thing you can put all your music in a tiny device

> Thanks but I don't have an apple device I think the walled garden approach gives authoritarian power to..

> Give it a rest already, not everyone is interested in your nerd turf wars

> I just want people to care about the infrastructures we're building and who..

> No you just want to feel smugly superior

later..

> Help I connected my smart home to apple and installed cameras and mics and other surveillance in all aspects of my life and now the 1 trillion dollar company is doing evil things!

> You see this, this is the worlds tiniest open source violin

This also applies to google and microsoft of course

#FLOSS #Apple #Google #Surveillance #Capitalism #ITunes #Surveillance #Privacy #Google #XKCD

Infrastructures

xkcd
Show threadCyberspiceDec 13
@ambiguous_yelp @Khrys How do you say “I don’t actually understand apple devices” without saying “I don’t actually understand apple devices”. You can do everything without ever connecting to a remove server. Backup devices to your mac. Backup your mac to an HD. Rebuild your iPhone (been there done that). Rebuild your iPod (been there done that too). Everything I have is backed up at home. Oh and my home automation is all local too. You want to use Homekit? You can with a Raspberry Pi!
Show threadCyberspiceDec 13
@ambiguous_yelp @Khrys Oh I develop embedded Linux devices as a consultant tech lead for a consultancy. I do linux I just prefer Apple on my desktop.
Show thread🌱🏴‍🅰️🏳️‍⚧️🐧🔧📎 AmbiyelpDec 13
@cyberspice @Khrys windows used to be like that then when they started funnelling more users to microsoft cloud services their stock went through the roof and now you cant make a local windows account. The same will happen to apple it will be death by a thousand cuts. Also I thought repairing your own apple devices was against tos doesnt apple send out cease and desist letters to repair shops
Show threadCyberspiceDec 18
@ambiguous_yelp @Khrys There’s an apple repair shop ten minutes from my house. Is that even legal in Europe?
Show threadCyberspiceDec 18
@ambiguous_yelp @Khrys Except that it is BSD and you can boot in single user / super user mode. I need to use a laptop off line so having only an online account is a total non starter. Basically if that happens I will just not up date the OS from the last version that supported local accounts.
Show threadCyberspiceDec 18
@ambiguous_yelp @Khrys On windows with WSL how does that stop local accounts? I can install VMs and the like and those images have to be local because they are large!
Show threadCyberspiceDec 13
@Khrys @sunflowerinrain Which is why you have a local backup. You always have more than one backup!
Show threadPeter HDec 13

@Khrys People must never forget:

The "cloud" is just someone else's computer.

If they don't like you anymore, or their product, it's gone. Using cloud storage is not too different from storing a thumbdrive at the house of your neighbours brother-in-law's friend: It may be a very nice place but you never know who might buy or visit it tomorrow.

Show threadKoenDec 13

@Khrys

A good reminder to backup everything of value on those services.

Show threadfedithomDec 13
@Khrys doing my best to feel sorry for the dude ... It's kinda not working.
Show threadRay McCarthyDec 13

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon don't care and only take notice of lawyers better funded than theirs.
1. Download everything, the Cloud is only good for sharing.
2. Remove DRM, or else you don't have a copy of what you paid for.
3. Make backups.

Even a 10 T Byte USB drive isn't expensive compared to his Apple outgoings. Have two and keep one outside the house. Not in car.

Allow Drive to reach room temp if kept somewhere cold. Regular SATA HDD in USB case. Not Helium, shingled or SSD (fades).

Show threadFossThoughtDec 13
@Khrys And the friggin' emojis they add to their responses just adds to the condescension.
Show threadCockneyLaurieDec 13

@Khrys
True, so.....

Never use cloud except as a back up, download everything to hardware in your hand.

And Amazon wonders why folk want to have un DRM locked e-books NOT to sell multiple bootleg copies (at least for most people) but to have the RIGHT to put the books they "own" on a new device they might buy from another vendor

Show threadAndreas SchödlDec 13
@Khrys
@rmondello any recourse here?
Show threadDaniel QuinnDec 13

@Khrys this argument is all fine and good, except when it comes to email. Everything hangs off of it, and self-hosting it is a recipe for regularly going to spam.

Even if you use Proton or move your email to your own domain, these companies require an email address, which inevitably is gmail.

So what's the advice here?

Show threadpoleguy looking for lost toolsDec 13

@danielquinn @Khrys I bought a domain and use that for signing up to everything. It just forwards to gmail. I can send from gmail as my poleguy.com email.

It is straight forward. But normal people will not do this.

Show threadGraham R PughDec 14
@poleguy @danielquinn @Khrys I'm currently locked out of my personal domain provider's control panel as the 2FA mysteriously disappeared from my Authenticator app, so I've had to submit utility bills and passport scans to try and get it back. If that fails I might be stuffed.
Show threadpoleguy looking for lost toolsDec 15

@SubjectMac @danielquinn @Khrys A couple years ago I went through the effort of helping my kids' school recover their Google Workspace credentials when their administrators was let go and took the passwords with them.

None of the "official" and technical methods of doing this worked. What worked was having a very non-technical representative from the school call and ask. So, essentially what worked was a social-engineering phishing attack played out by the actual owners of the domain.

Show threadKhleedrilDec 13
@Khrys You give all this money to Apple and you can't have a 6TB disk drive? You got your priorities all wrong. Always own your own data, multiplicate.
Show threadDreyDec 13
@Khrys - Turn off iCloud on your Download Loads and Documents.
Show threadHossain KhanDec 13
@Khrys very very unfortunate! I can totally relate, as I have TBs of photos on Google! I do have second local backup as well!
Show threadpoleguy looking for lost toolsDec 13
@hossainkhan @Khrys I swapped my thinking. I consider my photos on Google just an extra copy. My photos are local. My backup is on backblaze and local.
Show threadHey GusDec 13

@Khrys outside of being completely banned, it’s shocking that you’re unable to reach a single person to hear your plea.

You can prove, and they can see that the gift card was not forged or faked. You have ample evidence that it would be very much not in your interest to do this. The amount of money is not even kind of worth the risk of your career.

I have no way to help but I do hope that you’re able to get through to someone that will listen.

Show threadAlexDec 13
@Khrys Even if you get your account back after finally reaching a decent human, who says that your TBs of data aren't purged into oblivion at that point?
Show threadOlle GladsøDec 13
@Khrys Local backup of everything. Always.
Show threadJosé Manuel (Chema) SolísDec 13
@Khrys It's Murphy's Law again and again. The question is why this CAN happen.
Show threadJeremy BurgessDec 13
@Khrys best of luck (meant sincerely)
Show threadDarwin WoodkaDec 13

@Khrys

Fortunately most of what I had on Itunes I backed up on CDs and moved to MP3 files

Show threadAlceaDec 19

@Khrys
Which is why I
a) Store everything on my #router #NAS b) Have a cheapo payed cloud host
c) pay for encrypted #mail

#IfYouDontPayForItYouAreTheProduct

Show thread𝐩fᵣJan 8
@Khrys
Step 1: Become a pirate
Step 2: Self host
Step 3: Cancel all subscriptions