this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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553
An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card (www.techradar.com)
submitted 1 month ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
134 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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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 57 points 1 month ago (8 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.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 month ago

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.

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