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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

This is a clickbait headline. I'm not defending what happened, but it wasn't just for using (a) "gift card".

(Edit: The HN headline has now changed.)

As he himself admits, he used a lot of different cards of different values. He doesn't say exactly how many, and I bet that's because it's a lot. He also says he has "multiple Apple ID accounts in different countries".

Apple should absolutely restore this guys account if he isn't actually attempting fraud, but as far as anti-fraud measures go, this would make me suspicious, too.

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> As he himself admits, he used a lot of different cards of different values.

And if he wasn't buying the gift cards himself, there's a substantial chance that some of the cards he used were obtained fraudulently (e.g. bought by victims of gift card scams and subsequently sold by the scammers). While there certainly are some legitimate sales of gift cards, there's also a ton of money laundering that takes place, especially when the cards are being sold under face value.

I have all cards with receipts. They are all physical

If Apple isn't going to accept gift cards, it shouldn't claim it accepts gift cards.

He should take this to small claims court, I think.

Apple obviously accepts gift cards; people use them all the time.

"You're not allowed to have any fraud detection" would be a silly rule. I think there should be an appeals court sort of thing for these scenarios; I suppose that's probably small claims here.

When I ask what I have violated, they suggest reading the legal page. I've already read it a thousand times. There's nothing in there that I could have broken.

That's very common with these sorts of decisions; they won't reveal the specific reasons, and typically claim it's to avoid disclosing their exact anti-fraud strategies to potential adversaries. Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. all do the same.

The point they're trying to make is not that Apple is in the right, the point is that the original title (which was something like "Apple account disabled for using a gift card") doesn't represent what actually happened.

They told me by phone follow reason of block: "you redeemed several gift cards too quickly and they all had different face value".

Actually, it was purely for using a gift card. We just don't know which one triggered this response. There's only one thing that put them over the edge: a gift card.

And what everybody here is saying is that gift cards are basically high-fraud, and it's unsurprising that using gift cards could get you banned. So what's the takeaway? As one user said, don't use gift cards at all. If that's what people are recommending, I don't see how the title could be considered click bait.

> Actually, it was purely for using a gift card. We just don't know which one triggered this response. There's only one thing that put them over the edge: a gift card.

By that logic, anything happens only because of one tiny thing, and context doesn't matter ever?

Gift cards are the only way to load paid apps or IAPs onto an iOS device without giving your identity to Apple.

In description I wrote - activated about 2000. The reasons why I use gift cards I also described in the post

You may have multiplied account - It doesn't go against Apple's rules. Because not all applications are available in all regions and if you come to Europe, you will find many local applications especially for transport (parking) and banks.

So you activated several thousand gift cards, and I'm guessing you didn't buy all of them retail at face value, right?

In the Twitter thread, it's $2k worth of gift cards, not two thousand individual cards.

Yes, $2k. They were $50-100 face value

Can you see why redeeming 20-40 gift cards in quick succession might trigger a fraud flag?

I didn't activate them all at once. It was over a month ago, and I think I took my time for two days. I activated a couple and then went on to do the work.

You're still describing "in quick succession".

I did what I was comfortable with and I didn't think it would cause any problem at all....

> I didn't think it would cause any problem at all

I'm sorry this happened to you, but how did you not think activating 2 dozen gift cards would trigger a fraud alarm?

Yeah, that fits the profile of a scammer pretty close to 100%.

I believe that you are not a scammer, but since Apple doesn't know you bought all of these cards yourself, you exactly fit the profile of someone who scams people and has them send him Apple gift cards over a long period of time, and then he redeems them all at once, thousands worth. Your behavior should have tripped automated systems, and any humans looking at it should have been very suspicious as well.

Like I said, I believe you're not a scammer, although Apple's folks have more experience in dealing with scammers than I do, and they clearly think you are. My belief is based mostly on the fact that you say you have receipts.

The real shame here is that Apple provides no clear appeals process for you to show your receipts and prove you bought these cards yourself.

If they had a super clear appeals process where you provide documentation, it would be gamed pretty much immediately by organized crime syndicates.

Very true. I've been trying to be very gracious, but it's actually still not 100% clear that the poster isn't a scammer trying to redeem their ill-gotten gains. I'm not sure how one could prove that, to be honest. The behavior is all plausible, I guess? But sufficiently outside the norm that, well, like I said, I'm trying to be gracious and assume good intentions.

Is this one of those challenges that can be expedited with a good lawyer?

It’s probably better suited for small claims or arbitration.

Gah! 25 cards! This is like one of those movie scenes where something terrible happens and there's a slow-motion bystander going "n-o-o-o-o-o-o-o". I'm sorry this happened to you, but also this would have been more newsworthy if you somehow hadn't had your account locked.

I bought them at retail, at a nominal retail price. not all at once of course, I buy them from time to time just in case. this is the case when my laptop broke down and it came.

I assume you mean ¤2000, and not 2000 cards. I suspect it's the number of cards that makes Apple suspicious, and not the total amount of value. Or at least, it's some combination of the two.

Anti-fraud controls don't generally follow the published rules; that's almost kind of the point. Fraud signals are patterns of otherwise benign user behavior that in combination sets off an alert. No company publishes all of their fraud patterns, because fraudsters study them looking for loopholes.

So Apple's own "rules" don't really have anything to do with the story here; or at least, if they do, that story is shared in common with every major retail business in the world.

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