javamanphil
Dr Paris (he/him)posted about my Apple ID woes, please share widely?
it's on the orange site if you can spare an upvote too
Charlie McHenry@parisba They did this to me as well a few years back…then essentially denied me access to about $1,000 worth of music I had downloaded for my (back then) iPad. Not amount of conversation, emails, or social media posts remedied the situation. They won, I lost. Good luck. HN just might do it.
Scott Williams 🐧@CharlieMcHenry @parisba I also had a pre-email account. Someone got my password and changed it and Apple support said they couldn't recover it since their support tools required username to be email so they just apologized and I was out of luck. I lost my iTunes library. I'm not an apple user in general anymore, but that helped solidify that I wouldn't be returning.
theelous3@parisba yeah, this has always been a risk. As soon as AI bots started google-account permabanning people for AI bot reasons over nonsense like colourful youtube comments (real and imagined) I packed up and left the system. Not because I want to be a dick on youtube, but because I cannot trust high-stock-price-bags-of-words to be the masters of my digital life. If you ever get your stuff back - disconnect it. Eggs, basket.
Cenobyte 
Stephen Godwin@parisba For the photos, etc. you may have some luck with a subject access request under Australia's equivalent of the GPDR (which I think is called the Australian Privacy Act). Good luck getting this sorted.
Glyph
John Gruber@parisba @glyph Indeed. Godspeed and good luck.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/13/buttfield-addison-apple-account
flux@gruber FYI, John, I'm fully back on the air as of today, but share your concerns on Apple Gift Card safety. Small update here: https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/ — longer one soon. @glyph
@gruber I suspect I'll get more info soon, as he's off doing some research for me (he's very accomodating within the limits of what he can do/say), but he was VERY adamant that gift cards should only be purchased from Apple, not "Authorised Retailers", if one wants to be guarantee of their safety. I found that odd. @glyph
@gruber thanks for your part in drawing attention to it, by the way. Long time listener, first time caller, so to speak. Have attended many WWDC--adjacent theatre events, and really appreciated the coverage. Apple mentioned it as a source that drew their attention to it.
Wolfgang Lutz
Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒@glyph Likewise! I'm evaluating my ability to use a Linux laptop day to day at the moment, though. Still Big Mad.
@parisba We Mari Kondo'd our tech life a few years ago which has *largely* been a good decision, but it does mean that I no longer have access to a dumpster full of white-label commodity hardware running free OSes available as a backup. This story has definitely encouraged me to reopen the possibility of at least having a "project" computer again
@glyph I used to love computer tinkering, but the older I got the more I enjoyed being actually productive instead of the tinkering. Still not sure if I can actually be productive on Linux though. We shall see. And agreed, project computers can be useful.
masukomi
Angus Gibbins
lalala sombra@parisba This is quite a radical way to avoid gift card tampering.
There should surely be a less nuclear way.
Natasha@parisba @glyph Why are either of you tagging in this bloodthirsty Zionist who is gleeful to see Gazans die?
https://mastodon.guerilla.studio/@tixie/114988784427980745
https://mastodon.guerilla.studio/@tixie/114988784427980745
Tixie Salander (@[email protected])
Attached: 4 images It's not new but maaaaybe stop sharing and giving a platform to the Daring Fireball guy if you're not like him, a fan of genocide 🫠
John Cleary@parisba have you written to [email protected] ?
@john Yes, 3 days ago.
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CMDR Yojimbosan 🅅⁂
Luka Rubinjoni
mahadevank@parisba hi Paris, would like to help - is there an apple email address I could write to on your behalf?
I think all of us should write to them.
Would a change.org petition work? I'd happily sign
@parisba i also wrote about this on my linkedin feed - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7405509593394712576/
20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple | Mahadevan Kalyanaraman
Digital life looks extremely convienient until it simply disappears from your life. I"ve faced this situation a couple of times, most online services don't have a way to validate your account ownership and restore your data to you. If you lose access to your account or your account is closed by the provider for some reason, you're going to have hell. Here's an example of an Apple user who is currently locked out of all his devices because Apple thought the gift card he bought at a major store was dubious and locked him out of his Apple ID We have such irresponsible businesses these days. Take necessary steps to protect yourself, don't get too caught up with your digital life - and ensure you have your data accessible to you locally or in your private servers always. https://lnkd.in/gUTgPNEC #apple #irresponsible #digitallife
maynard@parisba Do you have an ABN? I know people at the Small Business Ombudsman - https://asbfeo.gov.au/ - that have helped resolve disputes with Apple and other tech giants. They may be able to help you.
@parisba last time I had (way smaller) issues, where the support was unwilling to help I just choose „I want to buy a Mac“ instead of „I have a problem“ in the first question of the support line and stated my problem there. The „selling“ guy was way more interested in my problem then support was and was really helpful.
@parisba the whole issue took some months to resolve and in the end the problem was that the identifier for our bank was wrong. As there was no way to write Apple about the problem, this was never checked. We got assigned our very own support agent after a while, who found the issue after a week.
Holger Krupp@parisba another reason why apple should not be allowed to force the use of iCloud as only possible automatic synchronization service.
I hope you get your account back.
root42
Martin Seeger@parisba Due to the ".nz" TLD, I don't expect you to fall under EU jurisdiction?
Simon ZerafaThis is absolutely horrific.
Denying you legal access to the devices you own, or at least your data has to be illegal? 😟
MarkV@simonzerafa @parisba I'm not a lawyer but I suspect none of this is technically illlegal in any way. Most of the tech industry has relied more on one-sided terms & conditions and the general assumption that companies should treat their users fairly, rather then legal requirements for them to do so.
Attempts to introduce consumer protection legislation (like the EU GDPR and DMA) have been globally fragmented, and met with massive pushback and disdain as "slowing down the speed of innovation".
UkeleleEric@parisba Unfortunately, this is the problem with these big tech companies and late-stage capitalism. The only thing that will help at this point is a lawyer, including a stated punitive amount (per day, starting in a week's time) of damages for each day they leave your account locked and your data inaccessible. Pleading obviously doesn't help at this point.
Eggs now in different baskets.@parisba
This is exactly why some of us have never trusted the vertically integrated service models pushed by the American capitalist tech companies.
I haven't missed Apple since I installed Linux on my macbook over a decade ago.
I wish you good luck and I hope that you find a way to sort out some sort of local back up in the future.
More power to the people less to the billionaires.
yertle@the_wub @parisba most of us would definitely be missing it. The features of integration are super useful! You are foregoing a ton of convenience and time-saving for the fractional-percentage chance of disaster. Everyone should do their own risk calculation, but I do not think your choice should be the norm
WesDym
a40YOStudent@parisba stupid question: so outside Italy you can buy 500$ apple gift card?
@parisba and why cannot we know the name of the brick and mortar big store?
Gonzalo Fernández Gómez@parisba
WTAF? 😱
This is scary shit. What the hell is wrong with Apple!
Maybe time to rethink my cloud strategy to prevent something similar happening to me.
WTAF? 😱
This is scary shit. What the hell is wrong with Apple!
Maybe time to rethink my cloud strategy to prevent something similar happening to me.
DanielMC@parisba this reminds me the Brazil movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) . I wish you a speedy back to normal.
Aleksandar Vacić@parisba what a horrible situation to be in. Apple seems institutionally incapable to find a humane way to resolve something like this.
F4GRX Sébastien@parisba apple is no better than google or facebook. I hope it was a lesson learned and your new nextcloud self hosted instance has a backup.
Glen Mastodon ☠@parisba it starts with laptops and might continue with medical devices. We need to be loud about stuff like this!
I am Jack's Found 404There are already some well documented medical device incidents:
steppl
Robert Kist 🇦🇹🇸🇬@parisba I feel for you. I had this shit happen to me on PayPal. I couldn't re-register my credit cards for years because I dared to log in from China in 2010 and they flagged the account as "suspicious". Good it was just PayPal.