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.
this happened to my 6 year old reddit account a couple weeks ago. i didnt break any rules that im aware of and its kinda devastating, as i use it to learn about tech and find new software. im happy to be here, and will remain active here, but it was such a valuable resource for me, and i feel like it was stolen from me.
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.
In the general public’s eye: convenience is literally everything
How long before an AI company buys all the hard drive supplies and foces us to use cloud storage?
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
The day “my personal cloud” stopped exclusively referring to my farts was a very good day for me.
Now I will be careful if someone wants to show me their personal cloud
…never put your entire life in the hands of a corporation!
Tesla fans: have you lost your fucking mind
If it’s not in your hands in an open format it’s not yours.
Imagine having all your important data in just one place.
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?
I’m still missing your point.
I’ve got all my apps I’ve downloaded backed up, at least for macOS. iOS… easier to grab the older ones off a pirate repository once Apple stops listing them.
Are you trying to say that everyone should be running Debian Stable without non-free on commodity x86 or RISC-V hardware with only open source hardware gerbers and no proprietary chips?
Nope. At this point, I see that nothing I say will matter. The die has been cast and it’s no longer worth trying.
Enjoy your Apple ecosystem.
“I’ve been buying all my oranges from the orange store for 35 years.”
“Boy you don’t eat turkey, do you?”
???
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.
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.
/c/Selfhosted
Nice name
Thank you. Still getting used to this Lemmy World business.
I’m kind of confused why someone would try to pay for an ongoing cloud subscription by buying a $500 gift card.
sometimes stores have sales that includes gift cards so you can get $500 of apple credit for 20% off
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.
Update- for the record, yes, Apple needs to make this right. I DO NOT blame the victim, my comment is here as advice, not to shit on the dude.
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?!
Sounds like a hell of a system that puts mine to shame. I’m impressed fellow self hoster :)
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…
They have backups, that’s not the point. https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
It’s not a backup if they don’t have at least one rotation in physical possession.
There is no mention of that being the case (or otherwise). But the fact that the author is clearly explaining they don’t have data loss, they have more or less bricked devices makes it seem like this is a bad faith argument.
It just works.
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.
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 … ???
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.
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.
