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 Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse. Can you help? Email paris AT paris.id.au (and read on for the details). ❤️ Update 14 December 2025: Someone from Executive Relations at Apple says they’re looking into it.

A large department store sold someone an apple gift card that was likely stolen/already redeemed, apple responded by permanently closing his apple account, bricking his devices and causing him to lose access to 20 years of saved media in iCloud

Edit: in the FAQ section he says that he has backups so that’s good. Main damage is that all of his apple devices are tied to the deleted account and won’t work anymore

    • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      4 months ago

      Scolding people who doesn’t do backups. Even hosting all locally if you don’t want to lose 20 years of files you do backups.

      • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        4 months ago

        Based on the article, it looks like the issue is more that they’ve bricked tens of thousands of dollars worth of physical devices that he owns and that since he’s a professional developer for Apple, they’ve kneecapped his income. He has the data mostly backed up.

      • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        dont even need to host locally, pulling the files and storing them on hard drives/CD-ROMs to shove in your cupboard is something. Though I gotta get better at educating folks on that front without sounding like a maniac