Locked Out of Apple Account Due to Gift Card
Paris Buttfield-Addison (Hacker News, John Gruber):
My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years (it was originally a username, before they had to be email addresses; it’s from the iTools era), has been permanently disabled. This isn’t just an email address; it is my core digital identity. It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.
[…]
The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan. The code failed. The vendor suggested that the card number was likely compromised and agreed to reissue it.
[…]
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.
Apple support was no help. We’ve been hearing stories like this for years, where someone who did nothing wrong loses access to their account and all their purchases and data. There still seems to be no solution other than running to the press after the fact. There’s no way to know that a gift card purchased through normal channels is bad. Apple won’t tell you what the actual problem was or provide any path to reinstatement. They just recommend creating a new account, which isn’t a real solution. You would still lose access to your data and purchases. As a developer, your apps would still belong to the old account, as would the purchases and data of anyone who used them. Resubmitting the apps through a new developer account would be a violation of Apple’s guidelines and potentially lead to a lifetime ban.
At the individual level, it seems like there are only a few things we can do to reduce our risk. First, use separate Apple IDs for personal and developer stuff. Second, it’s not worth trying to get a deal on a discounted gift card. If someone gives you a gift card, maybe save it for a hardware purchase so that you can use it without linking it to your account.
It shouldn’t matter—no one should have to go through this—but:
I am not a casual user. I have literally written the book on Apple development (taking over the Learning Cocoa with Objective-C series, which Apple themselves used to write, for O’Reilly Media, and then 20+ books following that). I help run the longest-running Apple developer event not run by Apple themselves, /dev/world. I have effectively been an evangelist for this company’s technology for my entire professional life. We had an app on the App Store on Day 1 in every sense of the world.
I went to Uni with this person (though I doubt they remember me.) They have a very high reputation. If anyone should be able to resolve this, it’s them — that they can’t, and they have to go public, is absolutely terrifying and should make Apple execs pay attention.
I mean that. Exec level. This story and that this specific person cannot get it fixed indicates absolute failure.
I have escalated this through my many friends in WWDR and SRE at Apple, with no success.
Update (2025-12-13): Paris Buttfield-Addison:
I do have backups of most data, including photos, but there are things you can’t backup like shared actively edited iWork documents, and things like that.
Previously:
- Unable to Join Apple Developer Program
- Locked Out of Apple Developer Accounts
- Another User Locked Out of Apple Account
- Multiple Apple ID Accounts
- Developer Account In Limbo Due to Popularity
- Apple Accounts “Permanently” Blocked
- Apple Account Locked Due to Failed Trade-in
- Student’s Developer Account Mistakenly Terminated
- Locked Out of an Apple Account
