[HN Gopher] Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs ...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no
explanation
Author : alwillis
Score : 668 points
Date : 2024-04-27 05:50 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| arthurcolle wrote:
| yeah this happened to me yesterday! i can still get in with
| passkey on my iphone but im dreading needing to go to apple store
| and tell them that i have been progressively getting logged out
| of my normal couple apple devices
|
| super weird, somethings going on
| peanball wrote:
| I had the same thing this morning. Unlock and password reset
| via another device worked through.
| jen729w wrote:
| Same here in AU, this happened to me about 8 hours ago.
| Standard reset procedure worked.
|
| Now when trying to configure a Recovery Key from my 2021 iPad
| Pro I'm told that I can't do that from 'this new device' of
| mine. -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| And when I try it from my iPhone I have to wait an hour
| because of Stolen Device Protection. Apparently I'm not at a
| 'familiar location'. I'm at home. I work from home. This
| phone is in this house for 99% of the time.
|
| Not _amazing_ is it.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Check if you have location services -> system services ->
| significant locations On. If it's disabled then effectively
| you have no "familiar location" as far as iOS is concerned
| jen729w wrote:
| Yeah it's on... always been on. Thanks for the tip tho'.
| mwexler wrote:
| I loved Stolen Device Protection when I first heard about
| it. And now I've wasted hours of my life dealing with it as
| part of the "Daily Lockout".
|
| And tech companies again demonstrate that they are "all
| about the user" by providing no clarity, acknowledgement,
| or empathy around the issue. It's depressing.
|
| Perhaps this is real talent in tech: to make things seem
| rather than be, and to build ways to avoid service and
| accountability unless it leads to max profit.
|
| I shouldn't be surprised each time this happens, but
| optimistically I still am.
| j45 wrote:
| Going to an apple store might be an option too with ID,
| etc.
| mmcnl wrote:
| My other device is locked out too unfortunately.
| a_random_canuck wrote:
| I'm betting they've turned on some AI "features" for detecting
| fraud and it's not working out as well as promised.
| miyuru wrote:
| similar seems to be happening at stripe, their LinkedIn was
| full of accounts locking out last week.
| southerntofu wrote:
| This is exactly what CloudFlare and Google have been doing
| for a while. i meet so many tech illiterate people who "can't
| log in to the internet" because of some discouraging CAPTCHA
| or because Gmail decided that even though they knew their
| passwords, a phone number they haven't used in 2 years (and
| has probably been reallocated to someone else) is a better
| proof of identity.
|
| It's a shame it's even legal to discriminate people's
| browsers based on shady stats and not actual abuse.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Those tech illiterate people probably have infected systems
| that are part of bot networks.
| southerntofu wrote:
| That's very unlikely. If you talk to anyone working in a
| public library or a local non-profit assisting
| elderly/homeless people, you will notice these issues are
| systemic and not isolated cases. From the cases i would
| see first hand, nothing would suggest that they had been
| compromised in any way.
| noname120 wrote:
| More likely is that they are behind a CGNAT.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| It would be really awesome if Google would kindly tell
| them so they could have an opportunity to fix the issue
| and reactivate their account, instead of hard-locking
| them out with no recourse.
|
| It's not like people are encouraged to keep their
| valuable data with these companies, only to lose the ai-
| fraud-detection lottery.
| k8svet wrote:
| Because HN loves to complain about this, I get to repeat it
| as always. Enroll a real 2fa (totp, security key, passkey)
| on your account and you will not face any of these issues.
| There's a _reason_ they do this for insecure accounts and
| an easy way to avoid it.
|
| I've logged into years-dormant Gmail accounts, from small
| towns in Mexico on a $2usd Mexican SIM and google has not
| even batted an eye.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Are they being hacked on a massive scale?
| vondur wrote:
| Happened to me today. First got the message on my computer that
| my location was unknown and needed to enter a code from the
| phone. By the end of it, I had to reset my Apple password. No
| idea why it happened.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Didn't someone discover the unpachable NSA backdoors in the M
| series processors recently? Could be related.
| orf wrote:
| No?
| RedComet wrote:
| He's probably referring to this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783112
| kingspact wrote:
| Yeah, LOL. They're trying to memory hole that one.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Happened to me last night. I got a push notification on my
| watch that I needed to update my iCloud password. I thought
| that this isn't right, so I went to my phone and MacBook. Same
| thing, those devices said I needed to change my password. So I
| figured someone has my @iCloud email address and tried to
| login. I do have hardware keys setup, so wasn't terribly
| worried.
|
| But none the less, I liked my old password and had to change to
| something else.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > figured someone has my @iCloud email address and tried to
| login.
|
| So... anyone with just your iCloud email address can get you
| locked out?? That's not what I would call secure...
| nottorp wrote:
| Hmm I used to get kicked out regularly (like 3 times per month)
| out of my apple login before i enabled 2FA. It completely stopped
| after. I assumed they were fraudulent login attempts.
|
| This does look more like a glitch on their side though...
| speedylight wrote:
| Considering how important an Apple ID is, this is kind of scary
| to be honest.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| How important is it exactly?
|
| I have had iPhones for more than a decade, and I never
| leveraged any "feature" of having an Apple ID on any of them.
|
| I've never bought an app or spent money on one, and I don't use
| iCloud, so the Apple ID for me is literally just a gateway to
| downloading free apps that I can always redownload with another
| one.
| kemayo wrote:
| You understand that you're an outlier here, right?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| No I really don't think I am.
|
| In fact 98% of the revenue on apps come from free apps.
| FdbkHb wrote:
| If your device is associated with the "Find my Mac" "Find my
| iPhone" stuff, losing your Apple ID is the same as possibly
| (only possibly because you can still have user accounts with
| separate passwords and use the OS, but there will be
| limitations) bricking your device.
|
| You can't even wipe the hard drive and reinstall macOS
| without access to the associated Apple ID. This is a good
| measure to dissuade thieves from wanting to steal Apple
| devices, but it is a terrible measure from the point of view
| of a user who has lost their ID.
| ccouzens wrote:
| > I've never bought an app
|
| Without being signed into an AppleID you cannot install free
| apps either. And if you install then sign out, you're also
| blocked from updating the free apps.
| Animats wrote:
| Apple says there is nothing wrong.[1]
|
| When your identity provider has total control over your life, and
| you signed away your right to sue for damages, this is what
| happens.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
| cjk2 wrote:
| I suspect there is nothing wrong as such ie the system is
| working as intended. The intention is either overzealous or
| broken.
|
| As for not suing them, I suspect that wouldn't wash if you were
| deprived of property due to a software issue.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| exactly. they already hit the revenue goals even with shitty
| quality. it's the only goal that motivates work and in a
| monopoly it's tied to market size only.
|
| what's a few thousand people per month losing all access to
| their data, if that is not even a blip on their revenue or
| revenue protections?
|
| if you're going to buy a new iphone, you're going to buy a
| new iphone. it doesn't matter the slightest if you read some
| nerds complaining something broke one theirs that same week.
| eastbound wrote:
| People pay in average $1000 every 3 years ($27 per month).
| So if 1% people choose Android next time, Apple will lose
| 1% of 2 billion users x $1000 / 3 years = 7 billion dollars
| per year.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| already way more than 1% do switch.
|
| but if you're close to a monopoly, numbers go up with
| market size increase. you can lose ((market size Delta) -
| 1) until your bonus motivated employees have to care.
| leptons wrote:
| Not only does the "walled garden" keep you safe, the walls are
| also too tall to escape it.
| cjk2 wrote:
| This is not exactly true. I can lift and shift to Google or
| Microsoft or standalone if I want to in a day easily. I just
| don't want to!
|
| (I have tested this - always have an exit strategy)
| nehal3m wrote:
| If you prepare for a case like this then it's easy. If you
| get caught off guard (like I imagine most people will) it's
| hard.
|
| I have an unhealthy habit of switching between FOSS and
| Apple a few times a year (don't ask) and generally it is
| pretty easy. The most annoying thing to me is Photos
| export, especially if you don't have access to a Mac. You
| can't download your whole library from the online
| environment, there's a 1000 image limit per shot.
|
| edit: Also I have not found a good way to export from Apple
| Notes so I have a habit of typing into .md files from the
| terminal.
|
| edit2: Gave it a search and tried Exporter. Duh. Works
| great!
| cjk2 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Actually an anecdote on switching, my father in law
| bought an iPhone in a pawn shop. It was logged in with
| someone else's iCloud account. He just used that until he
| dropped dead. We had no idea until I had to clean his
| phone out. My mother doesn't even know what iCloud is.
| Literally total ignorance must be the default for
| everyone these days.
|
| I've done the random switch thing as well as a test case.
| But to Microsoft. It took me a day to export all photos
| from Photos.app and into OneDrive and that was _with_ a
| Mac (105Gb). And of course you lose all the edits you did
| if you export the originals.
| GoofballJones wrote:
| Yeah, I never understood this whole "you're locked in, you
| can't get out of their ecosystem."
|
| This has always been BS. I've switched from Apple to PC to
| Linux back to PC to Apple back to PC and then Android etc
| etc. It's actually quite simple. At the moment I'm using
| Apple stuff, but there's nothing holding me here other than
| just me being here.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This is missing the point.
|
| Suppose Walmart has a monopoly in California and Target
| has a monopoly in Florida. Anybody in California can shop
| at Target, they just have to go to Florida. "I've
| switched from California to Florida and then back, it's
| actually quite simple."
|
| But if you're in California and you need some batteries,
| even if flying to Florida to buy them from Target is
| _possible_ , even if you used to live in Florida and
| might move back there next year, even if you have the
| money to buy the $300 plane ticket, it's still
| prohibitively expensive to do it _solely to avoid a $5
| markup on batteries_. Then the two stores don 't really
| have to compete, and you get stuck paying the monopoly
| price for everything. That's what it means to be locked
| in.
| cjk2 wrote:
| This is a crap analogy.
|
| You buy different stuff, copy your data across and sell
| the original stuff.
|
| That's not lock in. It is if there is no other stuff to
| buy.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > You buy different stuff, copy your data across and sell
| the original stuff.
|
| You buy a different house, move your stuff across and
| sell the original house. How is it a crappy analogy?
|
| The issue is that the cost of moving removes your choice
| from _individual decisions_ because they all have to be
| made together. If you want iMessage then you have to sell
| your Android and get an iPhone. If you want F-Droid then
| you have to sell your iPhone and get an Android. What if
| you want both? This isn 't because the free software
| community would be unwilling to set up a store/repository
| for iOS, it isn't because no Android messaging app would
| be willing to interoperate with iMessage, it's because
| you're locked in to one platform or the other at any
| given time and have to make all your choices together.
|
| Someone who wants to provide an app store that charges
| lower fees would have to convince everyone to switch to
| their _platform_ instead of only convincing people to
| switch to their _store_.
|
| The reason they make it that way instead of being able to
| choose what you run on your device independent of the
| kind of device is in order to lock you in.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Where is the button to copy your photos from apple to
| google? Until something like that exists normal people
| are 100% locked in.
|
| They may not even own a laptop with sufficient storage to
| download all their photos to. If all they have is one,
| maybe two, phones with limited storage they're totally
| fucked. Just like Google & Apple designed it.
|
| And it's not like these services make it easy to bulk
| download/upload your photos, either.
| coldtea wrote:
| "Even though I paid for this home (laptop) and have all my
| things in it, I can totally buy another from another
| realtor if the current locks me out. So joke's on them,
| it's not exactly a walled garden"
| cjk2 wrote:
| We can all use hyperbole and carefully pick our
| narratives when we want.
|
| Example: I can live in this nice comfy condo for a sky
| high fee (Apple) or I can live in a rickety old shed I
| have to keep fixing for free so I don't have to pay the
| ground rent (Linux).
|
| I'd rather live in the condo even if the lease runs out
| one day.
| coldtea wrote:
| The analogy is all well and good, except missing the
| point we're discussing that happened to the parent:
|
| It's not: "I'd rather live in the condo even if the lease
| runs out one day"
|
| It's more like: "I'd rather live in the condo even if the
| realtor arbitrarily locks me out, even though I did pay
| for it"
| cjk2 wrote:
| I'm not saying it was a bad analogy, just that it's easy
| to create analogies to create a narrative based on your
| own perception. Obviously the point was missed.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| In this case, their analogy seems to be based on reality.
|
| The key point of their analogy is that buying another
| condo isn't a good solution to someone locking you out of
| the one you paid for, just like buying a new phone isn't
| a good solution to Apple locking you out of your phone
| that you paid for.
|
| Your complaint with their analogy seems to boil down to
| "they used an analogy", without actually addressing the
| point above. Try to focus on the point instead.
| teekert wrote:
| I use Tailscale, NextCloud (files, pics, calendar, contacts),
| Podverse, Obsidian, Bitwarden (Vaultwarden), Home Assistant,
| ProtonMail, Signal, Element, .... If my iPhone (iCloud) goes
| down it's just a node in the network with all my data still
| my own and available.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| That's great for you and everyone on HN who's tech savvy,
| but your average smartphone user has no idea what those
| even mean let alone how to set them up and use them. Your
| parent is right and is being needlessly downvoted.
|
| My dad is often defeated on how to set up or use basic
| features of his smartphone, let alone on how to migrate
| stuff from one ecosystem to another, which let's be real,
| is purposely designed to be as friction inducing as
| possible.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| It will be great this set up can be commoditised so
| everyone can buy one for themselves/family.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| You can add it the bucket of similar crap that nerds make
| when they don't think to actually check if they're
| building something that solves a problem that people
| actually want solved.
|
| The reality is that if you go to any family BBQ and start
| going on about the importance of self-hosting, I -
| someone that's been working with computers my whole life
| - am going to roll my eyes and not be all that interested
| in the conversation, let alone anyone else there (chances
| are they don't want to talk about computers at all).
|
| The reality is that these open-source / self-hosted
| solutions are, the vast majority of the time, harder to
| use and maintain. There are few things that sound less
| appealing to me than dealing with the realities of
| helping my family and friends with using any of that
| stuff.
|
| This is all just some nerd's out of touch pipe dream.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _This is all just some nerd's out of touch pipe dream._
|
| Yes, though only because it's a lot of trouble to set up
| today.
|
| If it were completely commoditizated -- imagine one more
| button when setting up a new phone ("Choose where your
| data resides: Apple, Google, Facebook, Self hosted") and
| it was completely transparent then it would be used much
| more, especially if that's complemented by one of the
| nerds setting up e.g. a neighborhood sync server and
| everybody around knowing it and using it.
|
| So yes, you are not wrong but the situation can change
| dramatically if ergonomics are improved. Which sadly most
| of the nerds never work on.
| unlikelytomato wrote:
| I used to think this. The Google, Apple, and Facebook
| options are the improved ergonomics solution. It just
| never pans out for these open solutions. I've been
| waiting decades for it things to get to that level, but
| it always ends up the same way - fiddling with servers.
| pdimitar wrote:
| You are restating that the self-hosted options are not as
| ergonomic yet which I already acknowledged.
|
| As for waiting, yeah, sad story, but most of us don't
| want to be on the computer for 16-18h a day anymore. I
| implore any of the more privileged programmers -- people
| with job security, $200K+ annual salary, a lot of social
| safety nets -- to open their eyes and stop fucking around
| with the one millionth LISP interpreter and just start
| making non-corporate-controlled tech already.
| smeej wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but not all of those things are
| self-hosted. For example, Proton Mail isn't harder to use
| than Gmail. Signal isn't harder to use than any other
| messaging app.
|
| I've had great luck convincing even church ladies in
| their 60s to use both just by explaining that "end-to-end
| encryption" means that only the sender and recipient can
| read the messages, not big tech companies and
| advertisers.
| hu3 wrote:
| We are in a 0.01% bubble.
|
| For most people, losing their iCloud or Google accounts
| would be devastating.
|
| I always joke that I'd rather lose all my documents and
| credit cards than lose my main e-mail account. And only
| tech savvy folks understand that it is not, in fact, a
| joke.
| spike021 wrote:
| How's that? All my contacts can be stored locally, photos
| backed up both on my computer and to a separate service plus
| iCloud, it's pretty easy to set up Dropbox or Box in-place of
| iCloud Files. Apple Wallet is handy but it really just stores
| digital copies (over-simplifying) of my physical cards, any
| of which I can request a replacement for outside Apple.
|
| I don't use Safari but if I did any of its bookmarks/history
| are easy to import into other browsers.
| Wool2662 wrote:
| Yes, you can do this with considerable effort. But the
| moment you use OIDC with Apple ID there is a good chance
| you will lose many of the accounts created this way.
| highwaylights wrote:
| OIDC is the one part of this that really is an outsize
| problem.
|
| I'd say email providers are an even bigger problem
| though. Good luck getting your accounts back if you lose
| access to your own email account. I don't know that
| iCloud mail is particularly popular, but the risk really
| applies to any provider.
| yayr wrote:
| The effort is actually minimal. Just export the passwords
| occasionally and save it in an encrypted file. 30 seconds
|
| The issue is rather, that most people rely on these
| convenient services 100% and dont (want to) think about
| what happens in a bad case scenario.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| "Save in an encrypted file"? Christ. We really need to
| draw a HUGE line between "hacker news user solutions" and
| "things that are practical for actual people to do".
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Most people have a file encryption program of some kind
| on their computers. WinRAR, 7-Zip, some versions of
| Microsoft Windows (note: not supported in Windows 10
| Home), Microsoft Word...
| yayr wrote:
| I agree, that there is no obvious solution by just
| enabling a setting... But no matter what tool you use for
| it, that is what needs to be done. It is quite simple for
| example if you use Macpass or Cryptomator on a Mac.
| _V_ wrote:
| Your contacts can be stored locally but your device will
| not work if Apple says so as it needs to be "activated"
| against their servers. And there is no "secondary system".
| So no, you are completely dependant on Apple and their
| infrastructure even if you (think you) store data locally.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| "Garden" is too good of a word. "Prison" is more apt.
| danieldk wrote:
| You can use a Mac or iPhone without an iCloud account. Doing
| so works fine for Mac, most applications can be downloaded
| outside an app store. Sadly on iOS it makes the phone pretty
| useless if you want to install any third-party apps.
|
| Like others say, it's fairly easy to escape, just keep
| backups outside iCloud. Also, it's probably best to use a
| password manager that is not iCloud Keychain.
| nativeit wrote:
| Agreed. What's more, I find iCloud's implementation in
| MacOS to be far less intrusive than OneDrive in Windows,
| which constantly pushes me to use it as a default, and has
| at least once unilaterally forced the issue during an
| update by moving my home folders into OneDrive, and leaving
| an absolutely wild text file titled "Where Did My Files
| Go.txt" on the desktop. If I don't want to use iCloud, I
| can easily forget it exists.
|
| I'm not terribly partisan when it comes to platforms, I own
| and actively use an M1 Mac Mini, Dell Precision running
| Windows, and a Kubuntu box. I understand the assertion that
| software ecosystems tend to be a featured player in tactics
| aimed to fix users on a particular device or platform, and
| I think there's plenty of evidence that this is broadly the
| case. But I wouldn't use iCloud as a particularly good
| example of it, Apple's clearly not banking on their cloud
| storage to drive its revenue.
| nottorp wrote:
| Can you? You can skip using the measly iCloud storage I
| guess. But can you activate a phone without an apple id?
| farhaven wrote:
| And apparently, sometimes, when you want to return to that
| walled garden, your keys to the front gate just don't work
| anymore.
| fuomag9 wrote:
| I'm so glad it's illegal for me to sign away my right to sue in
| Europe https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-
| treat...
| coldtea wrote:
| The truth though is that if a consumer right remains hardly
| enforceable and impractical to sue and get any real
| resolution from doing so, corporations can live with
| consumers retaining it...
| baq wrote:
| Corporations usually get very polite and fast track issues
| when a consumer rights advocate gets involved.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I would say that most of the time people don't even know
| that not everything written in a contract might be valid in
| case of a legal dispute. However, once in a while we have
| nice things, such as requesting to be refunded the windows
| license https://sistemainoperativo.it/#:~:text=Come%20chied
| ere%20il%...).
|
| Unfortunately it's in Italian, basically if you don't
| accept windows (and office) tos you can be refunded, almost
| nobody knows this except some Linux users. However, if you
| follow the steps (such as not accepting the tos) you're
| basically guaranteed a refund or to win the legal dispute
| eastbound wrote:
| Just to add: This right to be reimbursed of Windows OEM
| has taken extremely long in the 1990ies to become a
| right, after much lobbying from Linux fans.
| berkes wrote:
| I did that once, almost 20 years ago. Bought an IBM
| laptop that came with windows (there weren't any options
| w/o Windows back then, for consumers at least). I always
| planned to put Linux on it.
|
| Rejected the TOC. Made a meticulous image report that
| showed careful unboxing and setup.
|
| There was a line in the TOC that (from very vague memory)
| disallowed using the OS for a.o. nuclear power mgmt. I
| did work in energy back then (but mostly webdev), so I
| could not rule this useage out. Send it along to Redmond
| and got a prompt reply from som e salesman for some kind
| of "industrial licence" for insane amounts. A few back
| and forths later, I got a measly EUR20 Euro's back. They
| put the rest down to admin fees, and OEM discounts.
|
| Anyway. It ran SUSE and (k)ubuntu perfectly.
|
| I guess it's much easier nowadays. But I buy my laptops
| preinstalled nowadays. Open the lid, answer five or six
| questions, restore my backups (/etc, .files, ~),
| reinstall the packages from packages.txt, reboot and
| continue working.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| As of today, in Italy, you get refunded the average
| market price for a license and not the oem price (roughly
| ~20EUR),so depending on the windows version you get
| 40/80EUR + if you have office, you get a few other bucks
| back, upto ~115EUR for windows + office. And yeah, it's a
| bit easier today but companies still try to make it
| difficult on purpose, such as asking you to ship back the
| product, while you're not obliged to. I spent last hour
| reading the legal proceedings on the site I posted and
| lol, they're kinda all the same, you ask a refund, you
| get told to ship it back, you do the "messa in mora" (you
| legally tell the company to refund you), they tell you to
| ship, you say you're not obliged to, you're eventually
| refuned
| gklitz wrote:
| I imagine this attitude of "even if we had laws protecting
| consumers they wouldn't get used" is a big part of why
| Americans don't have them. The European laws do get
| enforced, but of cause there is both room for and movement
| towards improving consumer protection.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Apple says there is nothing wrong.[1]
|
| My experience status pages (with Azure) is that they are a
| PR/legal mouthpiece. They only change once something becomes
| newsworthy.
| lr1970 wrote:
| Any change to the status page requires at least VP sign-off.
| They declare outage or a problem only when hiding it any
| longer becomes impossible.
| adolph wrote:
| Do you think systems reliable themselves? It takes real
| leadership to drive organizations to five nines.
| p_l wrote:
| You meant nine fives, I guess?
| chrisjj wrote:
| > All services are operating normally.
|
| Error: 'normal' undefined.
|
| ;)
| asmor wrote:
| Sounds like someone's doing credential stuffing. Apple had quite
| a few of those "other people can hit my rate limit" problems.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| What does it mean to be locked out of your Apple ID? What's it
| used for?
| happymellon wrote:
| Your Apple Id is used for everything Apple related.
|
| To set up your iPhone, you have to log into your Apple account.
| Macs don't care as much.
|
| If you use "Log In With Apple" then you'll lose that. And if
| you've decided to use the terrible Passkeys idea, you're locked
| out of that too.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Not sure if it's a valid data point or not. I manage 7 people's
| Apple ID accounts. This has happened a few times including twice
| last night but only on the people who use the @icloud.com as
| their primary email address. Assume that is related to password
| guessing attacks. Both addresses are in public email leak
| databases.
|
| Can only advise that you should have recovery contacts and a
| recovery key set up in case something goes wrong.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > If you lose your recovery key and can't access your devices,
| Apple won't be able to help you regain access to your account
| or your data.
|
| Seems like a dangerous advice for a regular person who can just
| go to Apple and get stuff back?
| cjk2 wrote:
| Quite possibly. But it's roll dice and hope Apple will fix it
| or guaranteed have a way out.
|
| Regular person can't even remember their email address so a
| good point though.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Can you disable recovery key later?
|
| I ask because Apple's docs helpfully say
|
| > If you decide to stop using a recovery key, follow the
| steps above on your device and turn off recovery key. When
| you do, you can use account recovery to regain access to
| your Apple ID.
|
| But the "steps above" only describe how to turn it on, not
| off.
|
| Edit: thank you.
| cjk2 wrote:
| There is an option to disable it but I've never tried it.
| So I assume yes.
| quitit wrote:
| I'd say your guess is right - the accounts typically get locked
| because hacking groups are running attacks on lists of email
| addresses.
|
| The email addresses ending in @icloud.com are scraped from a
| master list and the attack is directed to apple, while the
| custom domains are ignored because there is work involved in
| figuring out where those are hosted.
|
| iCloud lets the user generate secondary email addresses, it's
| better to use that and keep the login email address secret.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'm using my own domain for e-mail, but obviously I need another
| e-mail for registrar, hoster, etc. I used to use gmail for that,
| but recently switched to icloud as I thought gmail is too
| dangerous with Google banning people around. Seems Apple's no
| better.
|
| I have no idea how to untangle this dependency chain. I'm using
| registrar in my country, so if everything goes wrong, I can just
| contact them with my ID and hopefully fix things up, but I'd
| prefer to have 100% reliable e-mail in the first place.
| ricardbejarano wrote:
| I do this with ProtonMail, that's my root email. Not for any
| particular security reason. It's just another email provider.
| cjk2 wrote:
| The only thing you need to own is your primary email address
| and as long as that's on a domain you own then you can move it.
| That's about the only independence there is these days. If you
| use @icloud.com or @gmail.com for everything then you're
| screwed.
|
| You have to depend on someone somewhere. Just make that
| dependency less of an issue should anything show stopping
| happen.
|
| Personally I'd like to see some legislation around identity
| providers and service levels and account retention.
| mdavidn wrote:
| I think vbezhenar's point was simply that the recovery e-mail
| at a registrar should not depend on a domain managed by that
| same registrar. The registrar can update MX records.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Good point! I will look at my configuration for that.
| layer8 wrote:
| You can have two domains at two different registrars, each
| hosting the recovery mail address of the other.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Yeah keep your email provider and iCloud provider separate.
| For password management, use something like 1Password, and
| you got your main "identities" separated. In case of losing
| access to either of them, the impact will be relatively
| contained.
| freetanga wrote:
| Maybe an .edu account from a University or so? That's my
| approach to the same issue.
|
| And my email is on Fastmail under a custom domain. They have
| good support so far
| greenavocado wrote:
| You can't use the edu after you leave the institution
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Many places will let you. Many more will let it forward to
| a new email address.
|
| Anyone who published papers which included their academic
| email address will want it to persist forever. Paper
| publishing happens to be a special priority for many
| educational institutions.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| after the education capture race of 2022, every single
| institution in the world is either google or Microsoft.
| stavros wrote:
| Fastmail is the best email provider in its own right, _plus_ it
| 's not Apple or Google. Their support is extremely responsive,
| even in technical matters.
| chrisjj wrote:
| FM support is indeed excellent. But FM service has issues
| e.g. search faults which mean labels may bring up different
| results on a different day.
| layer8 wrote:
| All mail synced locally with local search is still best.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Agreed, but only where local is acceptable.
| hx833001 wrote:
| As long as you can change your Mx records, it doesn't matter
| who is hosting your email. If Apple had a problem, you could
| switch it to any other provider and request the reset email
| again, etc.
| tempodox wrote:
| Scary indeed. I tried it just now, after I saw the headline, and
| I could log into iCloud. But then, I have 2FA activated on my
| account and Safari uses Sign in with Apple to log in. Or maybe
| whatever problem it was has been fixed by now.
| dsego wrote:
| The thing that scared me recently was two updates that gave me
| new encryption keys. At first I trusted apple and wrote down the
| new key. But I became suspicious after the second update and
| checked online. It seems like it's happening to others, so I used
| the recommended command-line tool to verify my new encryption key
| and it didn't verify. Apparently it works after disabling and
| enabling encryption, but I'm just keeping it disabled for now.
| adastra22 wrote:
| This also spooked me. I'm a former security professional--there
| are few good reasons Apple should be doing this, and it smells
| of a targeted attack. If I had a zero-day exploit to steal your
| data, this is what it would look like.
|
| In the other hand, if Apple suddenly found out that a good
| chunk of encrypted volumes weren't actually encrypted / the key
| was recoverable by an offline attacker, this would also explain
| the facts.
|
| But the lack of explanation from Apple is troubling.
| fuomag9 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm one of the people affected by this and it has
| happened to me on multiple machines on multiple updates and I
| have no idea what's happening. Of course the keys do not
| actually work like for everyone else, which is even worse
| from a consumer UX standpoint (if I didn't knew better I'd
| just throw away the old key...)
| adastra22 wrote:
| It's on my todo list to backup and wipe that machine at
| some point. It's a desktop machine, not a laptop, and I
| don't save the recovery key to my iCloud, so I don't see
| how this could be a security threat. But something smells
| fishy.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> updates that gave me new encryption keys_
|
| On iOS or macOS? Was a consent dialog presented before the
| update was installed?
| dsego wrote:
| Sorry, macOS, I don't remember about the consent.
| tzs wrote:
| I'm not him, but for me it was MacOS. After the update was
| installed and the system rebooted it presented a dialog
| asking if I wanted to be able to use iCloud for recovery if I
| forgot my Mac login password. I let it set that up.
|
| Afterwards I wondered if it was just storing the recovery key
| I already had in iCloud or if it had generated a new recovery
| key and my saved one was invalid.
|
| I checked my recovery key ("sudo fdesetup validaterecovery")
| and it was no longer valid. A bit of Googling failed to turn
| up a way to get a copy of the recovery key that was in
| iCloud, and I decided I'd rather have a recovery key I store
| myself in case I need to recover when I cannot get online so
| I switched it back.
|
| Switching back is easy. You just turn off FileVault, then
| turn it back on and choose to manage the new recovery key
| yourself.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| maybe apple is tired of copying Samsung and will copy google
| for once :)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38043574
| renk wrote:
| That was the moment I started browsing ,,freebsd desktop" forum
| posts...
| fsflover wrote:
| You should try Qubes OS instead.
| jmkni wrote:
| Dumb question but how did you find this out? Do you manually
| check after every software update?
| dsego wrote:
| On the first update when it showed me the message, I trusted
| it and wrote down the new key and threw the original piece of
| paper into the trash. Then the second time it showed up, I
| became suspicious and did a quick google search and then ran
| the command tool just to confirm that the new backup key
| validates, but it didn't. My hunch is that it was still using
| the original key I had set up myself, but I couldn't confirm
| since I had tossed it.
| Exuma wrote:
| Can you share the command
| dsego wrote:
| I think it was fdesetup validaterecovery.
| n8henrie wrote:
| Sorry, can you give a few more details? Are you talking about
| FileVault encryption on your Mac? Or the newish iMessage
| encryption?
|
| And what command line tool are you referencing?
| dsego wrote:
| Oh sorry, I would edit the comment but it's locked, I realize
| now it's not that clear. This is about FileVault encryption
| on Mac and the recovery key. I think the command was
| `fdesetup validaterecovery`.
| blegr wrote:
| This is less severe than losing an account because at least
| the encrypted drive is backed up, right? :)
| HaZeust wrote:
| To this day, I still get random "Enter your password to continue
| using iCloud" push notifications on my iPhone with no relevant
| action to trigger such a notification.
|
| My Apple ID uses a unique password, I keep a recovery key, I
| don't have its login credentials saved anywhere, and it's a dev
| account; so I have my LLC's DUNS number attached to it. My
| devices are the only ones listed in my settings portal.
|
| I have no idea why I get these notifications, lol.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I have no idea why I get these notifications, lol_
|
| Perhaps so that someone who found your iphone unlocked can't
| just keep using it and your iCloud in perpetuity?
| jamescontrol wrote:
| I think he means, what causes apple to trigger those
| notifications. I don't remember ever seeing that prompt, at
| least not without myself doing some action to trigger it.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I think he means, what causes apple to trigger those
| notifications_
|
| Yeah, that's what I tried to guess too. Like, maybe those
| are sent periodically?
|
| Could be there's some heuristics like "logged in from a
| different city" or such, too.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Perhaps you are connecting from a VPN or endpoint that known
| bad actors have also used in previous attacks (university
| network, guest network).
|
| Or a device on your network is or was compromised and used as a
| channel to attack others on the internet.
|
| Or your ISP has given you a public address where the last owner
| was abusing it.. or perhaps the whole ISP block has been added
| to a shitlist.
| garyrob wrote:
| I got that prompt on all my apple devices a couple days ago. I
| just clicked Cancel on every one. The prompts stopped coming
| and everything seems to still work. I don't know whether there
| will be some ongoing problem with my AppleID that I'm not aware
| of yet, but so far so good.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Probably some regularly scheduled attempt to sync
| newrotik wrote:
| Only tangentially related, but I have been trying to enroll for
| Apple's developer program for almost 3 months now.
|
| Understanding what the problem is is essentially impossible.
| Going to a physical store doesn't help, calling their customer
| service has them telling you to go to www.apple.com/support
| (???), and writing for support has them rotate you through 4
| different, and decreasingly useful, representatives.
|
| The last response I got I was told the issue had to be handled by
| yet a different representative and it would take an "indefinite
| amount of time". Which may be a nice way of them saying it's
| never going to happen.
|
| It really is demoralizing when you realize there is nothing you
| can do really, even in cases when you have done nothing wrong.
|
| Not impressed to say the least.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I had similar issues, and I wish I could remember what solved
| it. It was something stupidly dumb like I had to log out and
| log back in on my phone or something. There have a couple of
| different edge case bugs that prevent people from signing up,
| and Apple customer support is useless on this.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Same here. It was something trivial with the form that I
| fussed around with until it worked, or maybe I didn't have
| iCloud enabled at all and the form didn't alert me about it.
| sammy2255 wrote:
| Register yourself as a company
| nativeit wrote:
| This requires a Dun & Bradstreet DUNS ID number, which isn't
| the most difficult thing in the world to obtain, but also
| isn't trivial, especially if you don't actually have any
| formal business documents.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Yeah, can say from recent experience this just adds _more_
| steps and opportunities to ghost for a couple weeks, get
| another vague email, ghost for a couple weeks...took me
| about 3 months to get it all going.
|
| The DUNS stuff was pretty funny. All flows related to
| getting an ID have a big "Are you doing Apple dev stuff?"
| button. It's like Apple outsourced support to them. Apple's
| DUNS lookup tool saw my business and the correct DUNS
| number, but trying to register with it got an
| error...eventually dissipated after a couple weeks. Same
| story for registering an account in the first place: it
| refused to register james@tld.com, where tld is a Google
| Workspace account, with no discernable error. Again,
| dissipated after 3 weeks, thankfully.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Then don't develop for them.
| WA wrote:
| People develop for other people and markets, not for Apple.
| prmoustache wrote:
| They are still working for Apple indirectly, especially if
| they sell through the app store.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| No
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| That's a funny take. I guess Apple is going to pay my
| sick leave, then? Buy me the hardware I need to do my
| "work for them"? No? Weird, guess I'm not working for
| them at all in any way.
| k8svet wrote:
| No, you're right, it's actually worse than if you worked
| for them. Lmao. Really the worst of all worlds. You're
| dead in the water with out their platform, without their
| grace, or with all of those things, but their incompetent
| auth platform.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is, but I 100% agree with
| you. Apple is awful, and you have to be downright
| masochistic to develop for their platforms. Thinking
| you're their employee when you develop for their platform
| is laughable.
| k8svet wrote:
| Oh, good reminder for me to watch my tone. My bad.
| adamomada wrote:
| You could reframe that easily by saying that without
| Apple making the hardware and services exist, there would
| be nothing to run your app on. It's a symbiotic
| relationship: devs need Apple and Apple needs devs.
| richardjdare wrote:
| I've had a similar problem trying to renew my Apple developer
| account. Had it for over 10 years. I had an email a few weeks
| ago telling me it could not automatically renew (same bank
| details that worked fine last year). Nothing I could do on
| their website would make it work. I got hold of someone on
| their online chat who directed me to the Apple developer
| forums.
|
| I gave up in the end. But I will have to sort it out before I
| can release the Mac version of my current project.
| 015a wrote:
| A friend and I spent a month or so building an iOS app we were
| hoping to release and monetize, but we're also entirely unable
| to get a developer account created. Corporate entity, DUNS
| number, American, extremely boring people, and just a generic
| "Error creating developer account" on the signup form. Apple's
| support was hopeless in helping.
|
| We gave up and re-built it as a web app. The thing that
| convinced me was the realization: When was the last time you
| installed/used a non-game App on the app store that, by your
| assessment, has less than 1 million users? I looked down my
| list of installed apps and realized that indie apps are kinda
| dead anyway. And our web app has been pretty successful.
| goodburb wrote:
| Couldn't see older photos/videos in the Photo app.
|
| Reminder for any iOS user that needs instant iCloud Photos
| backups (instead of manual monthly), get a Mac Mini, enable the
| Photos app, disable optimize for storage and keep it on to keep
| your memories safe. Always check the recently deleted folder on
| the Mac every month since iCloud by design is a two-way sync and
| not a backup, unlike most clouds that are one-way upload (doesn't
| touch your local files).
|
| Cold storage backup every month using the photos on the Mac
| should be easier as well.
| FBISurveillance wrote:
| Adding to that, also suggest having a self-hosted Immich on a
| home server.
| mmcnl wrote:
| Or use iCloud Photos Downloader once in a while:
| https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...
| sambazi wrote:
| an old linux laptop with a ubus-rule to rsync DCIM-folder upon
| device-uid connection would also work and not be dependent on
| apple products
| cjk2 wrote:
| Yeah this. I keep a weekly time machine and quarterly "copy
| everything to an SSD without time machine" backup in place.
| radicality wrote:
| That's part of the reason I always opt for the highest possible
| storage on my main MacBook whenever upgrading - to set
| Optimize=off for Photos and iCloud. Last upgrade was the 8TB
| M1. And then I connect that to a local NAS Time Machine backup
| every few days.
| holoduke wrote:
| In the future you have people living in excile because the
| conputer says no. Nobody understands why. Nobody knows how to fix
| it. The computer says no. Nobody gives a damn. You have no access
| to a bank account. No access to find a job. No access to get
| health care etc
| initplus wrote:
| In the future? This is almost certainly already the case.
| TheRoque wrote:
| I suggest people to watch "I, Daniel Blake" who talks about
| malfunctioning administrative systems, and nobody caring about
| it. I'm aware it's not related to credential issues, but I see
| it as the same: you have an issue that's related to an edge
| case, and nobody gives a damn about it, nobody takes the
| responsibility to look and see what's wrong about it
| robocat wrote:
| Computers don't make mistakes:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmPFLIH5s
| chrisjj wrote:
| The only protection is to subvert the system by using a false
| ID in the first place.
|
| Ultimate irony.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| One frustrating thing about Apple is that if you try to get help,
| there isn't really any way to do it. There isn't any way to open
| a real support ticket that will be seen by an engineering team
| there. The store staff can only do basic things. And if you go to
| their forums, you will get bot-like responses telling you to
| follow some useless generic steps that do nothing for your
| specific problem, or weird replies justifying some obviously
| incorrect thing with an Apple product like asking why you would
| even want to do whatever you're trying to do. I am not even sure
| who those people are that troll those Apple forums and serve as
| Apple apologists - like if they are employees of Apple or random
| users - but they are completely useless and basically deter
| anyone from seeking help in the first place.
|
| It is staggering that a company this big has nonexistent support
| and I think given the decline in their quality over the years,
| this will become a bigger and bigger problem. Unfortunately for
| most people the alternative is Windows, where Microsoft is
| abusing their monopolistic market power to shove ads and their
| services everyhwere.
|
| We really need new antitrust laws to break up these companies and
| support fair competition, and we also need regulations to reign
| in the biggest technology companies.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Can't you go to an Apple Store? Every time I see some customers
| seem to have a problem around Apple ID and such and staff
| helping. The opposite of Google, Microsoft etc. And there is a
| recovery process for Apple ID if you don't use a recovery key
| (and I guess if you have some government ID or such).
| SSLy wrote:
| Nearest is 600 km away.
| amelius wrote:
| You can't call them?
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| On... the phone?
|
| I really doubt that calls are disabled since it's "just"
| appleids, but the irony is still amusing. Landlines still
| have some uses after all!
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Hah. You expect that calling a store - after you get
| through the phone tree that gets you to the actual store,
| that someone at the store is going to sit down and start
| providing you customer support? No, they're going to tell
| you to make a Genius appointment, or go to the web, or
| their support number. They're not going to take time off
| of the floor, and if they do transfer you to the Genius
| bar, you've got 3-5 minutes, if that, to get an answer,
| before they too, do the same thing.
|
| The idea that a sales person in an Apple store is taking
| 20 minutes or more off the floor to provide some random
| caller tech support when they don't have any of the
| tooling around it, can't see your account, very little if
| any access to support databases, let alone account
| manipulation, is laughable. Apple does a lot of things.
| This isn't one of them.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| A couple of times in the last years I called them and they
| were helpful, but my issues were hardware so can't speak
| for Apple ID related stuff. When you schedule a call in the
| gui there are options for software troubles I recall
| though.
| int_19h wrote:
| For a non-business user, the situation with support (or rather
| lack thereof) is pretty much the same across
| Microsoft/Google/Apple. It's amazing that this is even legal,
| especially when it comes to account suspension/recovery.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Not trying to excuse their behavior, but my best friend and
| roommate was a part time phone support in college so I learned
| a few tricks...
|
| 1. They get a lot of dumb questions. If you want a "talk to an
| engineer" bug report, you really need to prove competency to
| the support staff. Obviously be nice because they're not the
| source of your problems they're just trying to do their job.
|
| 2. Chat staff aren't able to do much, phone staff have more
| power and insight. Chat staff can't see your account, can't
| issue pity refunds, can't make choices outside of the generic
| script. You should call during US business hours if you're
| trying to call the US support. Best case scenario is finding a
| college student.
|
| 3. They're required to have you follow the generic published
| help scripts first. If you pull up the webpage and directly
| tell staff you followed each step - then read them the steps
| for proof you know them - they'll often be able to just to the
| "custom help" portion.
|
| 4. If you make any reference to the TOS/Laws/etc they will mark
| your account as troubled and you will never get service again.
| You get legal canned responses only. They seem you not a
| valuable customer anymore. Don't reference warranty law,
| definitely don't threaten to sue, etc.
|
| 5. They can see how many apple products you have registered,
| how much you spend, etc and the customer service agent can
| decide how generous to be. If you only own a 5yo iPhone, and
| you're contacting support claiming the screen magically broke
| in your sleep they won't help. If you've upgraded every iPhone
| in your house every year for a decade, they might be nice when
| it "magically breaks on its own".
|
| 6. They have minimal training outside of the above mentioned
| docs. Again, the phone staff has better training. They have
| common devices in front of them, and if you can get someone
| sympathetic on the phone, they might try to reproduce it live.
| That's the golden ticket to a bug report.
| LocalH wrote:
| >4. If you make any reference to the TOS/Laws/etc they will
| mark your account as troubled and you will never get service
| again. You get legal canned responses only. They seem you not
| a valuable customer anymore. Don't reference warranty law,
| definitely don't threaten to sue, etc.
|
| This is problematic. They'll be happy to parrot out whatever
| TOS section you violated if you get banned under TOS, but
| completely stonewall you if _you_ bring it up?
|
| In situations like these, I draw analogy to a hypothetical
| legal system that does the same thing. Imagine that you are
| defending yourself in a court of law, and you bring up a
| specific legal code in your defense. The court then
| brickwalls you and assumes you are a bad actor, and you get
| thrown in jail. I know the analogy isn't perfect, but none
| are.
| chuckadams wrote:
| The main problem is all the kooks who will dispute an
| overdue payment by citing the Constitution, the Flag Code,
| and the Magna Carta. You can't have support staff engaging
| with these people.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| if you you don't pay or instruct staff enough to
| understand the difference, something's really bad at a
| company with that excuse.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I assume the intent (right or wrong) is that they don't
| want to deputize phone staff to deal with "legal" issues.
| They're not lawyers, so if you make it a law issue, they'll
| move you to a law support. But a big company won't actually
| have a lawyer argue over the phone - lawyers like "courts
| or quiet" policies.
| quitit wrote:
| As a tip: use your AppleID to generate a secondary email that you
| use for your day to day email, while keeping the login email
| secret.
|
| The problem stems from nefarious groups getting a hold of email
| addresses and running distributed dictionary attacks.
|
| Apple's response is to prevent all logins (including valid ones)
| from accounts that are under attack.
|
| Unlocking the account involves calling Apple, they're not going
| to tell you why the account was locked.
| kmlx wrote:
| i also did this: created an email address that i use
| exclusively on apple. it actually wasn't hard at all.
|
| zero issues since.
|
| > The problem stems from nefarious groups getting a hold of
| email addresses and running distributed dictionary attacks.
|
| years back my email was leaked by a website that i never
| visited. apparently someone signed up using my email address
| and the website never verified the email.
|
| in the meantime more and more people used the same email
| address [0] to signup everywhere (it's not the same person, i
| checked).
|
| [0] gmail ignores dots in usernames: https://support.google.com
| /mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#:~:text....
|
| at this point my emails should be random hashes@random hash
| domain
| quitit wrote:
| Another tip is to run a custom domain for email that just
| serves to redirect mail to your real email address. It's is a
| handy way of keeping track of how and who has leaked your
| information.
|
| For example I give custom email addresses to every service I
| sign up for, then I can see who they on-sold that information
| to, or if the email address turns up in database hack.
|
| The only thing to be mindful about with this approach is to
| choose a service that gives you a fair bit of control over
| how to manage that incoming email. Such as being able to
| bounce or block specific email addresses including the use of
| wildcards, because I notice some hacking groups will try
| permutations based on the original email address.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > gmail ignores dots in usernames
|
| Does account sign-in also ignore dots? If not, if sign-in is
| sensitive, there's a path to somewhat better safety: Start
| incrementally moving all daily email to variants containing
| added dot characters.
| malka wrote:
| What a shitty idea to use public information as a login.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That depends.
|
| In the app we have released, we use an email (we don't care
| which one, as long as it can receive email) as the login ID.
|
| The main reason is to limit the data we require be stored on
| the server.
|
| We only have one required PID item: the login ID. The user
| also enters a display name, but that can be anything, and
| does not need to be unique.
|
| Since we need the email anyway, we would need to have it
| stored separately, so this means only one PID item is stored.
| We also afford Sign in with Apple, which allows the user to
| obfuscate their email.
|
| Not having the information is the best way to ensure it
| doesn't leak.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > The problem stems from nefarious groups getting a hold of
| email addresses and running distributed dictionary attacks.
|
| Citation requested.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Wife got locked out yesterday.
|
| Got a message on her phone (settings notification). She had
| to change her password through the settings app.
|
| Called Apple just to check and they said they weren't seeing
| any weird activity. That they did see the password was
| changed, but no weird login or attempted logins.
|
| So, in my sample of 1, that wasn't the case.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > they said they weren't seeing any weird activity
|
| Yet did not give a cause for the lockout?
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| "As a tip: Do something completely unintuitive, annoying and
| also you had to have started doing this years ago, and maybe
| apple won't lock you out. Fingers crossed!"
| quitit wrote:
| No need for snark, you can change your Apple ID at any time.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > The problem stems from nefarious groups getting a hold of
| email addresses and running distributed dictionary attacks.
|
| Are Google accounts similarly vulnerable to such attacks?
| exitb wrote:
| My AppleID login is my primary GMail account, but with a
| +postfix. I guess it achieves the same purpose, but with less
| mailboxes.
| felsokning wrote:
| > The problem stems from nefarious groups getting a hold of
| email addresses and running distributed dictionary attacks.
|
| I use [REDACTED] as a provider and I create an email
| address/account (if possible) per company/domain I interact
| with (e.g.: personal_github@domain.tld or
| amazon_personal@domain.tld). This produces two results:
|
| 1. No shared credentials across any space.
|
| 2. Any junk emails to these addresses immediately tells me
| who's sold it (or been hacked) and I delete the account[s] and
| relevant email aliases and get on with my day.
|
| Some services, like Firefox, are starting to offer a form of
| "hide my email address" but this doesn't solve the problem of
| using <fistnamelastname@somepopularhostingservice.tld> as the
| same login id across a lot of services. If that was dumped
| somewhere, it is probably a strong bet someone has used that as
| their login, elsewhere.
|
| I don't know if there's another viable solution - but this
| reduction of possible login ids to one unique id per site is
| the only way I know how to (possibly) prevent myself from being
| an easy dictionary attack target.
|
| Edit: formatting
| notemaker wrote:
| With risk of being spammy, this is probably the most relevant
| discussion I've seen so far on HN w.r.t my experience of being
| locked out from my Apple ID.
|
| I hope legislation will force Apple to step up and be more
| transparent / helpful.
|
| https://skogsbrus.xyz/dont-put-all-your-apples-in-one-basket...
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| "I'm daily afraid something bad will happen with a thing I'm
| paying monthly and which i could replace with something
| slightly less convenient but safer, yet i will just pray to a
| government i have never participated in any way or form"
| phantomathkg wrote:
| I would expand to cover not only Apple, but Google and
| Microsoft.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| You don't have a requirement to have an email account to
| login to Windows. MS is pushing it hard, (deceptive trend in
| big software) but the user can still push back.
| antiframe wrote:
| I don't know if its still true today, but last time I setup
| a macOS machine (2020), it didn't require, but pushed, an
| Apple ID. My Pixel phone I setup this February also didn't
| require, but pushed, a Google account. I think iOS did
| require an AppleID, though.
| thomaslkjeldsen wrote:
| From the timeline:
|
| > got my Macbook Pro from work and signed in to my Apple ID on
| it.
|
| Wouldn't this result in unintentional data sharing from the
| work device to your personal devices? (and vice versa)
| nerdponx wrote:
| Yes, do not do this.
| notemaker wrote:
| In hindsight, yes that was a bad move (especially considering
| that my work laptop is still locked to my banned ID...)
|
| As an Apple noob at the time, I assumed that if my MDM-
| managed device prompted me to log in with my Apple ID, that
| it of course would be an allowed action.
|
| With regards to data being shared, the only thing I noticed
| was wifi passwords and peripherals pairing (apple keyboard).
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Yeah, I would never do this. My work iPhone is on a whole
| separate Apple Id than my personal phone.
|
| Never mix work and personal. It isn't worth it.
| orloffm wrote:
| It's enabled in some corpos. Allows one to make AirPods auto-
| jump between one's iPhone and work laptop etc.
| initplus wrote:
| Don't want to sound like I'm victim blaming the author. But I
| can tell you exactly the issue with their account: registering
| with an email on a self hosted .xyz domain. Using sketchy tld's
| is just asking for this kind of trouble.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Nothing sketchy about self hosting your email. Sure, that is
| what the big tech cartel wants you to think so you're forced
| to let them handle your correspondence "for your own safety".
| Don't believe their lies.
| initplus wrote:
| Issue isn't self hosting email, it's self hosting it at
| .xyz.
|
| They had one of the cheapest registration costs. And so
| ended up with a high concentration of spammers compared to
| older established tld's like dot com. Using the tld for
| legitimate purposes is really challenging due to the high
| number of systems that flat out blacklist it.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Making assumptions on someone's right to communicate
| based on their choice of email domain is discrimination,
| and only serves to drive people to their walled gardens.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I would say that SMS and invasive email services are
| sketchier than using .xyz.
| initplus wrote:
| You end up fighting an uphill battle against every third
| party that blacklists .xyz, It's not worth the fight just
| to use a cute tld and save a few dollars on registration
| cost.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| "Sketchy tld"? Even google's parent company uses it for its
| corporate website.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I babysit a few corporate mailfilters and have more spam
| from .xyz than from all other TLDs combined. I dont block
| on that (most get disappeared due to 'new domain') but
| that's the cohort all .xyz pages are sharing.
|
| xyz has been accomodating to scammers ever since its
| inception. After a decade I think we can say that it is on
| purpose.
| borgbean wrote:
| This is why I don't sign in or enable 'find my' on any of my
| devices. Apple even has a backdoor which bypasses the
| encryption, allowing them to wipe a device in store.
|
| Logging in takes control of your device out of your hands.
| thefifthsetpin wrote:
| Why would you need to bypass encryption to wipe the device?
| borgbean wrote:
| Because that is the way apple designed it. Try wiping a
| locked apple device without the password or recovery key.
| cpa wrote:
| Not exactly what's outlined in the article, but earlier this week
| I encountered an issue where I couldn't log into my laptop
| despite entering the correct password (it kept showing 'wrong
| password' errors). I managed to reset the password using the
| recovery feature through my Apple ID, but it was still
| unsettling.
| hgyjnbdet wrote:
| I can only imagine the uproar if this was happening to the users
| of any other company. But it's pretty muted here with a lot of
| consideration given for apple rather hostility. Nice to see.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| Other big identity providers suck too. For example, google
| attempts to extort a phone number by randomly locking me out of
| one of my accounts.
| kmlx wrote:
| i switched to passkeys on google and now i no longer need to
| input codes or passwords.
|
| there are caveats to passkeys thou.
| coldtea wrote:
| Remember when you didn't need any fucking online account to use
| your computer?
|
| Pepperidge farm remembers.
| endgame wrote:
| Linux is still here.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Problem is hardware. I don't like macos nor Apple, but their
| laptops are the best hardware out there.
| randunel wrote:
| I see this repeated over and over, but there's no proof
| that "apple hardware" is better than any combination of
| every possible hardware out there, it's just fanboyism.
|
| Anecdotes of bad hardware are everywhere, given that the
| majority of hardware are cheaper thus more prevalent. But a
| comparison of all possible hardware with the same price
| points? Not feasible, so it's all just feels.
| verandaguy wrote:
| I'll preface this by saying that this is not a defence of
| Apple's SSO issues as outlined in this article; but I
| think I can bring some quantifiable points to this
| discussion.
|
| Anecdotally, after over a decade of professional computer
| use:
|
| - No laptop as light as an MBP that I've been exposed to
| comes close to the weight-to-stiffness ratio of that case
|
| - No laptop out there has a trackpad that feels anywhere
| close to the MBP, that I've seen. It's a combination of
| palm rejection, latency, fineness of controls, and
| correct handling of multi-fingered gestures, with the
| actual glass of the trackpad being nice too.
|
| - Most other laptops out there don't ship with as good a
| display. Granted, the MBP displays aren't P3 calibrated
| or anything, but the colour reproduction is great, and
| the HiDPI clarity is excellent. Font rendering in
| particular is outstanding.
|
| That's just to name a few headline features. Is it
| possible to buy/build a laptop with those similar
| qualities? Hard to say. Trackpad drivers in particular
| tend to be tricky, and Windows precision drivers are the
| closest I've seen to Apple's trackpad feel, but those
| will typically fall apart on material feel.
|
| I doubt that you'd be able to make or buy a daily driver
| that feels as good while spending a reasonable amount of
| money, and you'd likely spend a good amount of time
| sourcing parts.
|
| I've had the opportunity to use three other laptop types
| during my career: two reasonably recent (at the time I
| had them) Lenovo Thinkpads, a Framework (briefly), and a
| recentish Dell Latitude.
|
| The Thinkpads stand out, but fall short on the display
| and trackpad points; otherwise they had a reasonably
| rigid keyboard compared to the MBP. The Framework was
| _fine,_ honestly. The modularity is excellent, but the
| deck flex on the first-gen model was way more than I 'm
| used to, and the display colours were deeply meh. The
| Latitude was bulky, but I mitigated that and other issues
| by just running it closed-lid and plugging it into a
| display, mouse, and keyboard.
| VelesDude wrote:
| Come join us in the free world of Linux (and related
| systems)... even if the wheel do pop off for like no reason
| some times.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's so nice when you can leave your computer alone for half
| a year, come back. And find that _nothing_ has changed.
| k8svet wrote:
| Nooo, then what will HN do with the multiple-times-a-week and
| hundreds of comments a month complaints about proprietary
| systems run by mega tech corps? Seriously I think there were
| FOUR different "fix"-win11 tools on the frontpage in the last
| 6 days.
| VelesDude wrote:
| I will take the wheels popping off occasionally over
| whatever that 8-dimentional abyss of hell that is Windows
| 11.
| chrisjj wrote:
| That ceased when your computer became their computer.
| whoitwas wrote:
| I use both Mac and Windows with no Apple account or Microsoft
| account. I lose some features, but gain privacy. Once I lost
| access to a Windows machine.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| There is zero privacy both on Windows or Mac.
| dijit wrote:
| could be somewhat related, last week I had a successful login for
| my Apple ID from a location I didn't recognise (somewhere in
| central asia).
|
| I noticed because I got a prompt on my phone, which requested I
| allow (or disallow) the access.
|
| Since I'm _pretty_ good about password hygiene and security, I of
| course changed my password _immediately_ and force-signed out all
| my devices.
|
| That being said: if someone has a password list and is using a
| bot to scan them all; Apple will of course lock-out sign-in
| attempts.
|
| Not to say what they're doing is right, there's better ways to
| handle it. But if I were to apply very recent anecdotal data to
| this even then this is a meaningful conclusion I could draw.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >But if I were to apply very recent anecdotal data to this even
| then this is a meaningful conclusion I could draw.
|
| That being.....?
| dijit wrote:
| that an account database is being brute force checked with
| various leaked passwords, and accounts that are being brute
| forced are being locked.
|
| Its a common problem that can cause denial of service to
| users, but failure to do anything can lead to account
| compromise.
| chrisjj wrote:
| Can cause? Will cause, surely.
|
| > failure to do anything can lead to account compromise.
|
| Only on negligently managed accounts, right?
| chrisjj wrote:
| > if someone has a password list and is using a bot to scan
| them all; Apple will of course lock-out sign-in attempts.
|
| Of course?? That would be insane. Password-guessing bots are
| all over the place. Apple should not allow them to cause
| lockouts.
| heyoni wrote:
| I wonder if there's a new leak out there with actually recent
| passwords we just haven't heard of yet. If Apple got their
| hands on it and confirmed a significant number of passwords
| were active then taking drastic measures is their only
| option.
| chrisjj wrote:
| I can't think of any source for suck a leak but Apple.
|
| > taking drastic measures is their only option.
|
| Less drastic would be to come clean and say the lockouts
| are by Apple themselves.
| heyoni wrote:
| I've seen a few posts by users claiming to use randomly
| generated unique passwords. If that's true then it could
| be a leak from apple. On the other hand it could also be
| that it's not and the security response team is catching
| users not on that leaked list due to unrefined
| heuristics.
|
| On the third hand it is an apple leak, they've been given
| a sample list by whoever is ransoming them so they've
| enacted overly strict heuristics that apply to everyone.
| dinckelman wrote:
| So i'm not the only one, huh. Got myself an iPhone, downloaded 2
| apps, went to bed, woke up to a complete lockout. They unblocked
| me through a phone support request, after 18 hours, and then hit
| me with a fresh ban, not even 24 hours later. Account got
| permabanned after like 5 more calls, where they just started
| sending me a legal notice instead.
|
| The fact that your device can become a complete brick, because of
| an issue in their completely hands-off account management system,
| smells like a class action suit
| luckylettuce wrote:
| This is scary...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| What did the legal notice say?
| dinckelman wrote:
| Nothing. It's just a link to the generic legal notice on
| apple.com
| Handprint4469 wrote:
| I bought an iPhone a couple of days ago, and was planning on
| using the weekend to finally migrate from my old Android phone.
| Luckily, I haven't even opened the box so I should be able to
| return it for a full refund. No way I'm spending over $1000 for
| this kind of experience.
| cal85 wrote:
| Apple lets you return anything, opened and used, within 14
| days.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Apple doesn't really "let", the law demands.
| adamomada wrote:
| They do eat the restocking fee that others would charge,
| taking the haircut on refurb sales
| cddotdotslash wrote:
| Google has done the exact same thing in the past, deleting
| Google accounts without warning (which is arguably worse
| because not only can you not access your phone backups but
| your email, calendar, drive, etc. is gone too).
| oops wrote:
| > which is arguably worse because not only can you not
| access your phone backups but your email, calendar, drive,
| etc. is gone too
|
| Some people use iCloud for email, calendar and storage so
| for them I imagine losing access to Apple ID would be just
| as bad.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yeah, and to stress the point: this is not "can't send
| vacation pictures to my grandma" bad, this is "might lose
| my company/my job and my house" bad, as _everything else_
| in life treats one 's email (and increasingly, app 2FA)
| as infallible backup.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| Companies that wrongfully ban or delete email or phone
| accounts need to be civilly liable and this civil liability
| needs to supersede any arbitration agreement or terms of
| service agreement.
|
| An Apple or Google account is far too important to people's
| lives to let them hide behind the "we're a private company
| and can do whatever we want" canard. They do need to have
| the right to ban spammers or people using YouTube or Drive
| to infringe copyrights but just randomly shutting off
| somebody's email or somebody's ability to make video calls
| should be against the law. The same would also apply to a
| text chat company like Slack or Discord banning somebody's
| work account for no reason. Certain tech companies have
| government-like levels of power over people's lives so they
| need to be restricted in how they can treat users like the
| government is restricted in how it can treat citizens.
| jjallen wrote:
| What are the odds of having this experience? Shouldn't they
| affect your behavior?
| recursive wrote:
| What's your recommendation? Try it 1000 times to get
| statistics?
|
| Likelihood should affect your behavior in the same way it
| affects whether it actually happens and it did.
|
| "Fool me once..."
| 1123581321 wrote:
| One in a thousand wouldn't yield anything. Because it's
| such an unusual experience (just a few of these happening
| around the same time would create a news cycle), one in
| ten million is probably closer since there are around a
| billion active Apple accounts.
|
| That's similar to the odds of dying in a non-Boeing plane
| ride. Even if the odds were one in a million, that's
| about the odds of being struck by lightning over a
| lifetime.
|
| I'd think someone returning a phone over this was
| regretting the switch for other reasons. It's fine to
| keep using Android.
| recursive wrote:
| This is a reasonable point of view I guess. But there's
| not really a reliable way for the consumer to get the
| real probability. If it happened to me, it's likely
| enough to consider. Maybe there's a hidden variable about
| my usage pattern that makes it more likely. Since it's
| totally opaque, there's no way to know.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Sure, if actually happens to someone, they're rightfully
| not risking it again. If for no other reason, it'd be
| likely that a fresh account would be detected and
| associated with the old one. Plus, whatever unusual
| situation of yours triggered the ban, such as border
| crossing or how you route your Internet traffic, would
| probably still apply. (I'm not saying someone is doing
| the wrong thing if those things are the case for them.)
| yannis wrote:
| Black swan events can happen to you. Recently I traveled to a
| European country from my base (Middle East). I normally take
| my phone and laptop with me and they are synced. I forgot the
| laptop charger and could not get one locally not at least for
| about a week and then dropped my phone and it got damaged. I
| bought another phone (Adroid) and tried to log in to by
| google accounts. It recognized the email and the pswd but
| then wanted verification from the original device! Despite
| having the original sim in the new phone.
|
| On my return everything went smoothly through my laptop.
| Scary though.
|
| My conclusion - have two physical phones + laptop all synced,
| plus hardcopy of important pswds etc.
|
| Data is easier to protect by offline and online back-ups, but
| your online identity is hard.
| andersa wrote:
| This is standard Google behavior. Logging into Google on
| any new device always asks me to confirm it on one of the
| other devices that are logged in (i.e. phones, tablets).
| Suppose it's some kind of 2FA.
| yannis wrote:
| I understand the security concept of it. Luckily my trip
| was short. As I also use wechat to communicate with some
| Chinese friends, my experience was different. First it
| send me an OTP on the new phone, then asked for two
| friends to send a number to the phone. Luckily I had the
| phone number of one and I managed to restore and to be
| honest having humans in the pipeline was a plus. Negative
| this had to be done over 5 minutes otherwise you back to
| square one.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _My conclusion - have two physical phones + laptop all
| synced, plus hardcopy of important pswds etc._
|
| And then say, Meta decides to ask for login verification on
| your other device, and you lose _that_ account because you
| always logged to it through a browswer in private mode, so
| no device actually has an active session. Happened to my
| wife the other day.
|
| IT "Security" is reaching new heights of being bullshit.
| You can't win, and asking people to buy multiple devices
| and keep them continuously in sync is a bit much, and not
| even a guarantee of safety anyway, as next week Google or
| Amazon will hit you with some next weird trap to keep you
| "sekhure".
| gruez wrote:
| >IT "Security" is reaching new heights of being bullshit.
| You can't win, and asking people to buy multiple devices
| and keep them continuously in sync is a bit much
|
| You likely don't need to buy multiple devices. I log in
| from random countries/VPNs all the time and never have
| issues, but I do have 2fa enabled. If your account only
| has a password and there was a suspicious sign in
| attempt, it's reasonable for them to ask for additional
| verification somehow because you could be a victim of a
| credential stuffing attack. It's hard for companies to
| win here. Either people complain about their accounts
| getting randomly locked because they were on vacation in
| Romania and tried signing in on a new device, or the
| companies get grilled by the media for "failing to
| proactively protect their users' data" or whatever.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I would agree with you if there actually was anything
| different in a suspicious way about those logins. There
| weren't. Same devices, same ISP, same browsers, not even
| an OS update in between. Just one day, few days ago, out
| of the blue, Facebook decided to pop up a conformation
| request, offering no alternative to confirming from
| "another device", and that's with them knowing (or at
| least having that information available) that there are
| no live sessions of that account (the whole browser in
| private mode thing).
|
| Maybe the companies can't win, but they also have
| themselves to blame. They shouldn't have convinced people
| to entrust their only copies of data with them. Your
| vacation photos should not depend on someone's cloud
| platform. Half of your entire offline life shouldn't
| depend on Google not randomly locking you out of GMail.
| But here we are, and I'll keep calling those "security
| updates" bullshit because they don't care about long
| tail, and they don't care about hazards they create for
| most of their users.
| dns_snek wrote:
| > and that's with them knowing (or at least having that
| information available) that there are no live sessions of
| that account (the whole browser in private mode thing).
|
| Unless you explicitly logged out, they likely to see the
| opposite picture, i.e. numerous "valid" sessions (as
| opposed to active) that haven't been used for varying
| lengths of time because you logged in, but from their
| perspective, you never logged out. You just cleared your
| cookies which means the session is still "valid", even if
| it's inaccessible to you because the session cookies have
| been cleared from your device.
|
| I don't know if they take any of this into account but as
| you've pointed out, assuming that the rightful owner of
| the account must have access to a different session is a
| huge assumption to make.
| figglestar wrote:
| My experience with Meta is it is just a PII fishing
| expedition masquerading as a security check.
|
| I abandoned my facebook account when they asked for my
| driver's license scan, a few weeks later suddenly they
| didn't need it after all. My BIL recently wanted me to
| check sout omething he had setup on facebook and I found
| I could "login" by clicking one of the "what are people
| doing" spam emails they send. I've never used it on this
| PC before and have no idea what the password even is
| anymore. Super secure.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| What would happen if you send them a realistic, but fake
| generated scan?
| zadokshi wrote:
| How many laws would that break?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| It breaks a law when you are legally required to
| authenticate. But when a random dude on the internet asks
| you, you're not required to do anything.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| That's the reason to setup 2fa, because otherwise
| monopolies can legally kick you. Well, they can kick you
| anyway, because they are monopolies.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 2FA makes it easier, not harder, to lose access to your
| account though.
| zadokshi wrote:
| I can easily imagine an AI algorithm noticing a user has
| two phones, and deciding that is out of the ordinary and
| suspicious, and locking you out of both.
| layer8 wrote:
| Don't bind your online identity to Apple or Google or
| Microsoft, in particular not the email addresses you use
| for accounts. That at least limits the damage they can do.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Which is why they make it so hard to avoid doing this.
| layer8 wrote:
| Using your own email account doesn't generally make
| things more difficult.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| I'm thinking of Microsoft Accounts on PCs and how you
| need to know how to jump through hoops to avoid them at
| OOBE. And about how this is about AppleIDs and losing
| them - it's my understanding that Apple is less
| aggressive about AppleIDs than Microsoft is about
| Microsoft accounts, but also, TFA. Google has similar
| levels of fuckery especially if you're on Chromebooks but
| Google's sin is nonexistent customer support. I wouldn't
| want my most important email address to be tied to any of
| these three, although I speak as a gmail-using hypocrite
| who plans to change that soon.
| toast0 wrote:
| The thing that really bugs me about Google is you can
| make an account tied to an unrelated domain, but then
| they don't let you use that for a lot of things, so
| you're forced into a gmail account.
| rchaud wrote:
| iTunes didn't even allow you to add your own album art.
| To do so you had to be signed in with Apple ID, so Apple
| could look up the album details on the iTunes store and
| set the image that way.
|
| This was in 2008, so the software ecosystem lock-in
| strategy was already well-established back then.
| lapcat wrote:
| This is utterly false:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnBsIAiZfFc
|
| You could always edit artwork in iTunes. Indeed, you
| could import albums from your own CDs and not even use
| the iTunes Music Store at all.
| rchaud wrote:
| The video you linked is from 2015, almost a decade after
| the time period I referenced in my comment.
| lapcat wrote:
| You're seriously doubling down on your ignorance instead
| of just admitting that you were wrong?
|
| Google Search tends to favor more recent links, but
| here's one I found from 2010, which is closer to your
| 2008.
| https://www.macworld.com/article/206005/itunesart.html
|
| I've now provided two points of evidence. Now show us
| yours.
|
| [EDIT:] iTunes 4: What's New
|
| June 23, 2004
|
| "View song artwork for songs purchased from the iTunes
| Store, or add your own artwork to the songs in your
| library."
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120606153823/http://docs.in
| fo....
|
| From 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080213232351/htt
| p://docs.info....
|
| Editing Info
|
| Each audio or video file in iTunes has several settings
| and tags that can be easily modified. These options can
| be accessed by selecting any file in the iTunes browser
| windows and selecting "Get Info" from the File menu. You
| can add song lyrics, artwork and set special playback
| options. The "Info" tab lets you edit information about
| the file including artist and album info
| generalizations wrote:
| > You're seriously doubling down on your ignorance
| instead of just admitting that you were wrong?
|
| From the guidelines:
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't
| cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
|
| > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead
| of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3"
| can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
|
| > Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including
| at the rest of the community.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kelnos wrote:
| Perhaps something to add to the guidelines: "don't try to
| weaponize the guidelines when someone calls you out for
| misrepresenting the facts".
| generalizations wrote:
| I don't really care one way or the other if iTunes let
| people set custom album covers back in the day. That
| first comment by OP just stuck out like a sore thumb. The
| guidelines are there because they make HN nicer to
| participate in.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I was adding my own album art to ripped CDs since well
| before 2008.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Fundamentally it's going to be be bound to _someone_
| though. If you run your own domain to host your main
| email address, you 're now bound to the registrar's login
| to manage that domain name, and also the cloud provider
| you're using to host the mail services (unless you run
| that off a machine you have physical access to).
| EasyMark wrote:
| If you use your own domain, open source software, and
| backup often they can't lock you up forever like
| Google/Microsoft/Apple tho
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You're missing my point that you're still beholden to the
| domain name registrar that manages your domain name on
| your behalf. That account getting permanently locked out
| will have all the same bad consequences for your online
| life as your Google account getting locked out.
|
| And keep in mind that being a domain name registrar is a
| low margin business (typically they're only grossing a
| few bucks per domain per year, before accounting for any
| other expenses like staffing and systems), so you're not
| gonna get great support.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I don't think anyone is arguing that they can get away
| from the chain of trust required to operate in the modern
| world.
|
| I believe they are advocating for minimizing risk by not
| deeply integrating with capricious cloud providers.
| Animats wrote:
| The backup for that is a registered trademark on the
| domain. Recovery via ICANN procedures is slow, though.
| the8472 wrote:
| My understandingis is that legally you own the domain and
| the registrar is only managing it on your behalf and they
| are required to transfer it to another registrar if they
| terminate you as a customer. As recently happened for
| russian users on namecheap for example.
| wwweston wrote:
| At some level, every business has incentives to minimize
| what they provide you vs what you provide them. But even
| low margin businesses where you're the customer are more
| likely to have incentives and structures built around
| paying attention to you than low margin per user
| businesses where users _aren't_ the customer but part of
| the product.
| layer8 wrote:
| Yes, but you can choose a medium-sized, established
| registrar with a functioning human support desk, where
| you are the customer instead of the product driving
| hyperscale ad revenue. The hosting provider is not an
| issue, because you can switch very quickly to a different
| one if needed, and only have to change your DNS entry at
| the registrar, or whatever you use as your nameservers.
| Depending on your country's jurisdiction, you also may
| have some legal rights to the domains you acquire under
| the country TLD and are not exclusively at the mercy of
| the registrar.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but I'd much rather be bound to a domain registrar,
| where I'm paying them for a small, well-defined, self-
| contained service, where I have recourse if they do
| someone shady to me.
|
| For Google/Apple/etc., I'm either not paying them at all
| (in which case they have very little incentive to help me
| off someone goes wrong), or I am, but for a basket of
| services. The identity portion of those services is
| probably not what that company is focusing on providing,
| and any weirdness with any other service in that basket
| could cause me to lose my access to the identity bits,
| often without recourse.
| notyourwork wrote:
| There really isn't a good solution for this for the
| masses, is there?
| layer8 wrote:
| Buying a domain is not difficult, nor is configuring it
| with a mail service like Fastmail. Yes, it's slightly
| more involved than signing up at GMail, but it's less
| complicated than doing your taxes (YMMV). The more people
| do it, the more helpful resources and service would
| appear for it. The problem is most people don't care
| until they get unlucky and their account gets cancelled
| for inscrutable reasons. It would be better to have
| regulation that protects users.
| stouset wrote:
| The risk of an average person forgetting to update their
| credit card details and irrecoverably losing a personal
| domain is almost certainly thousands of times higher than
| them being accidentally and permanently locked out of a
| Google or iCloud account.
| layer8 wrote:
| Where I live, the most common payment method for such
| services is direct debit from your bank account, where
| the details never change unless you switch banks; and in
| the rare event that you switch, you can make use of a
| service that banks are legally required to provide for
| transferring debit mandates to the new account. I bought
| my first domain about twenty years ago and never had to
| change anything regarding payment.
| stouset wrote:
| A lot of people live paycheck to paycheck. I'd wager
| _even more_ people on average would lose their domains
| with this approach either by forgetting to or being
| unable to put the necessary funds in their account, and
| having the payment declined.
|
| Losing your entire online identity because you didn't pay
| on time is an absolute show stopper for an enormous
| number of people.
|
| Most people are not tech people. They do not know or car,
| or even care to know, about the details and importance of
| maintaining and protecting an online identity. They won't
| remember to update payment details until things start
| failing. They won't check their email frequently enough
| to notice before this happens. They will ignore text
| messages, either assuming they're scams, spam, or
| unimportant.
| layer8 wrote:
| You're in the US, presumably? Is it really that common
| there for people to overdraw their account to the extent
| that direct debit in the $10 range would fail? That would
| be a very rare occurrence here. And you wouldn't
| immediately lose your domain just because the payment
| failed once. It would be a much longer process.
|
| People also have a mobile phone number with a plan they
| have to pay for. I don't see why a domain should be any
| different, and it isn't actually that different in my
| country.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Although I can and have managed domains and mail
| services, I don't agree that what you described is for
| the majority. Do you really think that's true?
| layer8 wrote:
| In the current state, the majority will need some help,
| similar to how they need some help when something goes
| wrong with their laptop. But as I said, if this would
| become a more widespread practice, more services would
| become available that make it easy and that help in case
| of trouble.
|
| The biggest impediment is probably that most people
| aren't willing to pay (say) $10 per month for a domain
| and email hosting like they do for streaming services,
| because they're used to email being free. So they remain
| at the mercy of the big providers.
|
| But I can at least encourage the HN crowd here to move to
| independent services and to use their own domain.
| adamomada wrote:
| You can use your own domain with Google at least, and I'm
| guessing Microsoft as well. It could be a good middle
| ground where you control your email and just let
| google,etc use it for the time being. It looks just like
| gmail but you can always get out if you have to.
| gruez wrote:
| > It recognized the email and the pswd but then wanted
| verification from the original device!
|
| Did you have 2fa enabled by any chance? I have 2fa via TOTP
| on my accounts and while they offer using a signed in phone
| as a verification option, using TOTP was always an option,
| and I was never locked out of my account.
|
| >Despite having the original sim in the new phone.
|
| That would only help if google had some way of tying the
| installed sim to your account. Given the privacy
| implications and the technical difficulties, I wouldn't be
| outraged at the fact it didn't take your sim into
| consideration.
| yannis wrote:
| Yes I had 2fa + OTP, however being a new phone they still
| ask you to tap on the old phone.
| gruez wrote:
| Are you talking about a prompt like this[1]? If so, there
| should be a poorly named "more options" or "don't have
| your phone?" link that gives you the option to enter your
| TOTP code instead.
|
| [1] https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/
| AVvXsEh...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This is actually great. You basically look like a stolen
| device with a sim swap.
| 05 wrote:
| How would the thieves know the password? Even unlocked
| iPhones don't show saved passwords without Face ID
| prompt..
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| A reused password that was breached somewhere else.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> My conclusion - have two physical phones + laptop all
| synced, plus hardcopy of important pswds etc._
|
| Why do you need more than a single phone plus a hardcopy of
| your Google recovery codes (assuming you know your Google
| account password)?
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| In case one phone doesn't work or is lost or stolen or
| broken, I guess. Plus buying a second phone is great for
| the economy!
|
| Society was collectively sold this deal where if you
| entrust everything to a trillion-dollar company, you'll
| be treated well and this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
| Yet it appears to be happening, and the trillion-dollar
| company that has the resources to deal with this so far
| isn't being very helpful, and it's falling to the
| consumer to take insane amounts of proactive measures to
| not have their digital lives fucked up when the exact
| deal was that _you wouldn 't have to_, but of course now
| the party line will be "well you were obviously stupid to
| believe the trillion-dollar company's trillion-dollar
| marketing, then."
|
| And I'm annoyed as one of the people who did _not_ buy
| into it.
| rchaud wrote:
| Even more damaging is the lie that modern tech continues
| to sell people: that they're too stupid to use computing
| technology, and all the restrictions of the platform
| (relative to real computers) are actually for their
| benefit and not the corporation's.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| And, almost everything is a "computer" nowadays, from
| your phone to your car to your refrigerator, but only the
| OG computer is even remotely "fixable" to the average
| consumer. All the others, you're hamstrung and forced to
| go through official channels for subpar, marked-up
| service because if you try to do anything yourself
| they'll brick your device and maybe sue you for good
| measure.
| adamomada wrote:
| I think the modern definition of computer is something
| with a screen and keyboard. While you're right that
| almost everything has a chip in it, calling your fridge a
| computer is disingenuous.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Ah, but a smart fridge has a screen and a keyboard now
| too, and so do car consoles :)
| adamomada wrote:
| Touche
| gwerbret wrote:
| > Why do you need more than a single phone plus a
| hardcopy of your Google recovery codes
|
| Because, as I can tell from a similar experience to GP's,
| they also won't save you if the authentication
| infrastructure decides you're not who you say you are.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| If I lost my phone, I would still have access to three
| different recovery methods:
|
| - I have my recovery codes
|
| - I have access to my recovery email address
|
| - I have access to a TOTP token
|
| I would hope this is sufficient to persuade Google's
| authentication infrastructure to let me in.
| shanemhansen wrote:
| As I learned in Google SRE: "hope is not a strategy"
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Hope is part of every strategy that doesn't have infinite
| cost.
| hedora wrote:
| I had a similar experience with google a while back.
|
| My conclusion: Eliminate what little remaining usages of
| their services I have.
|
| Doing that with iCloud _and_ Google would be a colossal
| pain. This event has me thinking more seriously about self-
| hosting a few more things.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > My conclusion: Eliminate what little remaining usages
| of their services I have.
|
| This. I never used the Apple's Cloud offerings to backup
| things - and I stopped using any Apple devices since the
| BatteryGate. I semi-degooglify my Android(s), and never
| use the "Google-*" (contacts, calendar, etc.). I block
| them with NoRoot Firewall and disable them, and use other
| apps for those services. I sync with my Oulook (2013) and
| my backup is with Carbonite. I do have to jump through a
| couple of hoops, but considering that I don't live under
| the threat of 'death' by Apple or Google to hold me
| hostage with my data/etc, the little effort is well worth
| it.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> I never used the Apple's Cloud offerings to backup
| things
|
| I try not to, but every year I log in and check and there
| is data stored in their cloud that I specifically tried
| not to have stored there.
| genevra wrote:
| Exactly. I recently had the same experience of being
| locked out when I lost my old device and had no recourse.
| My conclusion was the same and I've stopped relying on
| all Google services except Gmail.
| pmarreck wrote:
| > when I lost my old device and had no recourse
|
| Well, if you used Google 2FA, the Authy app exists, and
| allows you to securely store 2FA in the cloud (as long as
| you remember your Authy credentials).
|
| If you don't, then yes, your physical phone essentially
| becomes a dongle and if you lose it, you're screwed.
| Perhaps they don't educate users enough about this, but
| that's the fact
| treflop wrote:
| 1. Use two-factor auth.
|
| 2. Save those backup codes.
|
| 3. Be able to get those backup codes in some worst case
| scenario.
|
| I have had to start from scratch before but never have been
| locked out.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 4 - Discover that those backup codes are useless because
| the service provider will refuse to acknowledge them when
| you travel.
|
| The fact that we are stuck with a pair of global
| apathetic undemocratic identity providers is absurd. And
| one of the reasons why that "shattered dream of passkeys"
| is on the front page. At least that dream got shattered,
| it would be worse if it went through.
| r00fus wrote:
| I need to hear more about this scenario.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| A google account is not required to use an Android device.
|
| So if you don't tie all your contacts, sync and backup to
| your google account, you can have a phone that they won't
| lock you out of.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Or, keep a set of single-use backup codes for 2FA. Google
| offers this[1], though I don't know if Apple does or not.
|
| Storing them seems problematic, but it really isn't:
| They're just random-looking 8-digit numbers and nobody but
| you needs to know that they belong to your Google account.
|
| Or, KISS. If you're happy with the idea that the SIM card
| controls the key to the castle, as it seems that you are,
| then: Put a backup code in a contact in your SIM card. (It
| is kind of a lost art these days, but SIM cards are still
| data storage devices here in 2024.)
|
| [1]: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1187538?hl=
| en&co=...
| chrisjj wrote:
| Return for refund?
| uh_uh wrote:
| Same applies to Apple terminating legitimate developer accounts
| and thus destroying livelihoods.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> smells like a class action suit_
|
| You (and others like you) need to meticulously record and
| assess the financial damage the lockout does to you.
| everforward wrote:
| Do I bill them for my time hourly, or as a cost plus project?
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Can't be that hard to justify in some way for a filing. The
| industrials and big commercial guys do this _all. the.
| time._ I even bet there 's bunches of SLA templates out
| there with the right litigious lingo to ease the filing.
| johndunne wrote:
| This happened to me yesterday although I was able to quickly
| unlock my account on my MacBook pro. I spent a while making
| sure it wasn't an attempt by a backdoor to access my password.
| Felt very suspicious!
| anecdotendum wrote:
| Bought a brand new MacBook last year and set up a fresh iCloud
| account to go with it. Problem was for the First and Last Name
| I entered some variant of Unknown User / Unknown Account (for
| privacy..) and chose a username
| "user.mailbox.unknown@icloud.com". Everything was fine but 24
| hours later, I could no longer sign into the account. It was
| saying my password was incorrect! I was 100% sure this password
| was right so wtf? In a panic, try to remove the account from my
| brand new device and can't! You have to sign in normally to
| remove an account in settings. Obviously I called Apple support
| and a high quality American sounding woman took my call. She
| said my account appeared like it had been deleted, like when a
| user deletes their own account. She placed me on hold and found
| out what's going on. Apparently "engineering" had my account
| DELETED. My only guess is they didn't like my user name /
| mailbox name and suspected I was a fake person. Anyways the
| lady was able to get my account temporarily reinstated right
| there on the spot and I was able to login and delete that toxic
| account off my Mac. I made a new account and everything's
| working fine. Needless to say I was very impressed with how
| they handled my situation, within 20 mins no less.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| You were impressed with how they automatically deleted your
| legitimate account and forced you to make a new one?
| nrml_amnt wrote:
| They were impressed by the high quality American woman.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The fact that your device can become a complete brick,
| because of an issue in their completely hands-off account
| management system, smells like a class action suit
|
| This is HN frontpage. It's on a big "Mac" website. The damage
| is done.
|
| Many are going to write nonsense like: _" Apple is still a $2
| trillion company, so this obviously works for them"_ to which
| I'll respond with a simple question: Did it not work for Apple
| _before_ these SNAFUs? Does it work _better_ for Apple now,
| after fuck ups like that?
|
| It's not normal behavior and they _are_ losing customers over
| this.
|
| We had an Apple "moment" in the family: around the 2012'ish
| MacBook Air era. Two at home and they worked fine, for about
| ten years. Then the battery issues, the keyboard issues, the
| trackpad issues. Eventually these MacBook Airs died a painful
| death.
|
| I'm on Linux since the nineties (and, yup, I can get into my
| system with Apple or Microsoft forcing an online ID down my
| throat) but the Macs were convenient for the wife.
|
| So we bought a MacBook Air M1. After 13 months or so the screen
| died alone, overnight: was working fine before closing the lid,
| was dead in the morning. There are threads with dozens of pages
| on that subject.
|
| That's when I switched the wife to Ubuntu. Ubuntu, Linux Mint:
| she doesn't care. Heck, I probably could have her use Debian or
| Devuan (Debian without systemd).
|
| Apple is done for us. It's over. We'll never ever buy a Mac
| again and I'll never ever recommend a Mac to anyone.
|
| And I'm far from the only one thinking that way.
|
| The damage is done.
|
| Rationalize as much as you want, invoke AAPL's market cap as
| much as you want, and enjoy being locked out of of your devices
| without any recourse.
| blegr wrote:
| Everyone has a brand they're never buying again because of a
| few problems they had in the past. For every new brand they
| _are_ still buying, there are 10000 other people who are
| never buying _that_ one again because of a few problems they
| had in the past.
|
| The only difference I've seen between Apple and my previous
| laptop brands is that their support techs are useful.
| sottol wrote:
| And unlike, say, Samsung Ultrabooks or even Microsoft
| Surfaces, Macs last a really long time. My kids are using
| my 2011 MacBook Air and 2009 iMac and they still work, even
| the battery still kinda hangs in. They've had a few rough
| years 2016-2019 with the butterfly keyboards but I don't
| know many current manufacturers with products as solid long
| term.
| prmoustache wrote:
| In my experience laptops from the competition are as
| durable when you pick up the professionnal line instead
| of the general consumers one. That will be Lenovo
| thinkpads, Dell latitude, HP elitebook, etc.
| blegr wrote:
| I'll admit the support for my Dell was pretty good. They
| sent someone on-site to fix a known defect in their
| product line.
| ornornor wrote:
| Lenovo has been tarnishing the think pad brand for
| several years now, pushing plastic junk that also has the
| thinkpad branding. It's not enough to stick to thinkpad
| anymore, _which_ thinkpad matters.
|
| Ditto HP. Their machines are... not great to operate on
| (from a maintenance perspective), their hardware
| maintenance manuals are much lower quality than they used
| to be...
|
| Only dell latitude hasn't disappointed me yet, and I fix
| laptops as a hobby so I've worked on quite a few
| 2014-2019 machines.
| fl0ki wrote:
| Agreed. There are countless old models you can buy off
| eBay, drop in a new SSD and battery, install your distro
| of choice and keep using for several more years. Almost
| all models of that kind have a lot of serviceable parts,
| for example replacing the thermal paste is usually easy
| and makes the cooling better than it was brand new.
|
| I haven't bought one myself simply because I have my own
| units that still work 10-15 years later. The screens mean
| they're dreadful as actual hands-on laptop experiences,
| but they're perfectly fine for home servers with built-in
| battery backup and management console.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| My Surface Pro 3 still gets 90% battery life.
|
| My HP hybrid tablet, now over 15 years old, still works
| (when plugged in).
|
| My dad's IBM Thinkpad, older than most people currently
| on this website, still works.
|
| Apple people like to claim that Apples last longer than
| their competitors, but that simply isn't true. Most
| people, myself included, can't tell you what Dell or HP
| support is like because we've never had to use them. But
| _every_ Apple user knows what Apple support is like,
| because _every_ Apple user has had to use them.
| kyriakos wrote:
| The comparison people tend to compare from their
| experiences are usually much cheaper models. This is the
| main reason they feel apple lasts longer.
| adamomada wrote:
| I hope you can see that what you wrote can't possibly be
| true.
|
| Surface people, HP people, or Thinkpad people have all
| had to contact support at times as well. Is it more or is
| it less than Apple, is the question (and isn't answered)
| rrrix1 wrote:
| I am a satisfied Apple user, and have been for over 30
| years.
|
| I have never contacted Apple support. Not once. Yes,
| really.
|
| Unfounded claims are unfounded.
|
| Sometimes devices break, sometimes they last for 20 years
| and keep on humming.
|
| Also for the record, I'm also a Linux, Windows, and
| FreeBSD user running on HP, Dell, Lenovo, SuperMicro,
| Framework, System76 and DIY machines.
|
| My experience indicates premium components usually (but
| not always) last longer than more economical
| alternatives.
|
| That said, if I never had to use a Microsoft product
| again, I'd be fine with that.
| YZF wrote:
| I'm writing this on a 2013 MBP. This specific machine is
| slightly bent and endured being hit by a car. Those other
| laptops that you mentioned, that aren't made out of
| aluminum would be dead. I've also had a few Lenovo T410s
| (circa 2010). I would say the quality and spec of those
| T410s isn't up to par with MBPs of similar era. Their CPU
| fans fall apart. They tend to overheat. The hinge breaks-
| plastic. The display and audio quality is worse. Software
| support also sucks. At some point newer versions of
| Windows just don't have good support, the webcam from
| example doesn't work in modern Windows. On the Macs
| though you can still run fairly modern OS and everything
| works. I would totally take a 2010 MBP over a Lenovo
| Thinkpad of any type. (EDIT: from the same era)
|
| I've also used top of the line Dell laptops over the
| years and a Lenovo Yoga.
|
| Way way back I used to have a desktop color Macintosh of
| some sort (I forget the model, a 68k, maybe IIci ?) and
| as PCs were getting tossed in the landfill for years
| while the Mac kept going and running most new software.
|
| I just bought my daughter a laptop and decided to go with
| the MacBook Air m2. Great value for money IMO. Not sure
| what's even close in terms of performance, build quality,
| battery life etc. This should easily last 10 years.
| talldayo wrote:
| It's all a matter of tradeoffs. Aluminum is nice but it
| doesn't protect the internal glass panel from shock
| damage and a $600 topcase replacement if you mess it up.
| Especially on the older Macs, that chassis adds to the
| weight and leaves them pretty fragile considering their
| tank-like exterior.
|
| Speaking for myself, I'd rather have the plastic
| Thinkpad. Lenovo commits well to the OS I use (Linux) and
| I don't want to baby around a laptop that threatens to
| bankrupt me if I drop it on the Starbucks tile. In terms
| of longevity, I can do a hell of a lot more with a 10
| year old Thinkpad than I can with a 10 year old Mac.
|
| > Not sure what's even close in terms of performance,
| build quality, battery life etc. This should easily last
| 10 years.
|
| Recently picked up a Lenovo Thinkbook with a Ryzen 5800u
| in it. Basically a Steam Deck in sheep's clothing, with a
| nice HDR 1440p display. I gave it to my brother, and I
| expect it to last just as long (if not further with
| community driver support).
| YZF wrote:
| The M2 is faster and more power efficient than the 5800u.
| The display is 2560 x 1664. I think the Air display is
| better and brighter. The speakers on the Apple laptops
| also tend to be better.
|
| Not sure about drop resistance or cost of repairs. I've
| dropped MBPs and they were fine (anecdotal) and the MBP
| I'm using was literally hit by a car and was slightly
| bent as a result and still works.
|
| The battery life of the air is supposedly 18 hours and
| having no fan is also nice. No laptop I previously used
| compares with my work MBP m3 for battery life or
| performance. The air weighs 2.7 lb. I don't know which
| specific Lenovo you got at but the Thinkbook 14 weighs
| 3.3lb.
|
| That said, I did pick a 13" Lenovo Intel i7 about 5 years
| ago when I was looking for a laptop for my other
| daughter. That laptop is still going strong. It did die
| about a year after I bought it but was repaired under
| warranty (still a quality question though). But I think
| today Apple has pulled ahead and the prices on the m2
| these days are good.
|
| I've never had a good experience with Linux on laptops.
| The hardware support always seemed iffy. Power management
| also iffy. But I have to admit I haven't tried in a long
| while.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| To put things bluntly, literally every classmate in law
| school using an Apple laptop had to get their laptop
| replace _at least once_ due to the failure of the device
| caused by normal usage. My understanding from younger
| relatives is the same.
|
| That HP hybrid? That was my laptop in law school. It
| still works, and it's great for drawing (though not as
| good as my Surface).
|
| _Their CPU fans fall apart. They tend to overheat. The
| hinge breaks- plastic. The display and audio quality is
| worse._
|
| Apple laptops circa that era were notorious for heat
| issues, weak plastic, and poor displays. Their sound
| quality wasn't much better than a cheap PC laptop, unless
| you shelled out for a top-of-the line MBP..and of course
| a $2500+ laptop is going to be better than a $500 laptop.
|
| _Software support also sucks. At some point newer
| versions of Windows just don 't have good support, the
| webcam from example doesn't work in modern Windows._
|
| This is objectively false. I can still run software, and
| use hardware, _from the 80s_ on my Windows 11 desktop.
| You can 't even run 5-year old software on an Apple
| because Apple broke compatibility.
|
| _while the Mac kept going and running most new
| software._
|
| This is objectively false. Older Macs can't runner new
| Apple OS software.
| YZF wrote:
| My 2013 MBP is running Big Sur latest release September
| 11, 2023. But yes, you can't upgrade past that. All the
| hardware and software works just fine.
|
| My web cam on the T410 doesn't work under the Windows
| version it's running and hasn't worked for many years
| (and I've had a few of those, it's not just one bad
| hardware).
|
| EDIT: The variability of hardware on Windows laptops is
| just so much larger. There's so many different
| motherboards, so many different peripherals, so many
| different GPUs. There's no way Microsoft is testing
| against all permutations of laptops from more than 10
| years ago with their native drivers. Lenovo doesn't have
| modern drivers for the T410 either and I doubt other
| laptop companies release new drivers for their old
| laptops. I've owned and used for work many Windows
| laptops from various vendors. I've had 3 T410s I
| inherited and I spent a lot of time trying to keep them
| going including cannibalizing some of them for parts.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _My web cam on the T410 doesn 't work under the Windows
| version it's running and hasn't worked for many years_
|
| The T410 works in Windows 11, so if it's not working for
| you, it's a simple driver update.
|
| But on the note of Apple just working, there is an entire
| frontpage thread about how Apple isn't "just working" for
| thousands of people whose Apple IDs have been locked out.
| And The Verge currently has a front-page post about their
| Apple editor discovering that Apple doesn't just work and
| in fact has quite piss-poor speakers
| (https://www.theverge.com/24139303/mac-mini-laptops-
| desktops).
| YZF wrote:
| I'm just about to retire my last of 3 T410s (its hinge is
| broken and it tends to freeze from overheating. I
| replaced the cpu fan on it 2 years ago). I tried all
| sorts of drivers. Some just don't work. Some work for
| like 10 minutes and stop working. Windows 11. Maybe there
| is some magical driver somewhere. Are you guessing or do
| you have a T410 with Windows 11 and you use the webcam
| regularly?
|
| Yeah, I saw the Apple ID thread today. I thought Apple ID
| was optional. (e.g. I don't have an Apple ID for the MBP
| I'm using right now).
|
| The article you linked to says: "My M2 Air had great
| speakers." It's the Mac Mini (not a laptop) that has poor
| speakers. Can't comment on that one.
|
| EDIT: A by the way there is that I believe a T410 can
| actually have different components, i.e. some might have
| a camera from one vendor while others have a camera from
| another.
| goosedragons wrote:
| No. Those other laptops WOULDN'T be dead. They WOULDN'T
| be dented either. ThinkPads from that era had a maganisum
| alloy frame. They are hella rigid but the plastic shell
| gives enough bouce so they don't dent when dropped.
|
| And macOS software support is awful. It's completely
| random and up to the whims of Apple with some models
| getting only 6 or 7 years support if you bought at
| launch.
| YZF wrote:
| I'm not talking about a dent. I'm talking about the
| entire (closed) MBP bent by a car driving into it. There
| is no way a ThinkPad plastics wouldn't have broken (and
| its frame bent). But I guess we can't perform this
| experiment. Plastic is just not as good a material -
| sorry. Not just is it not as strong when new it also
| doesn't have the same longevity.
|
| See here for some random MBP drop tests:
| https://youtu.be/8kLtQBF52m8?si=a42uejjR4rUWWg-F
|
| The ThinkPads are pretty good vs. most laptops in terms
| of design and durability (going back to IBM). I still
| think the MacBooks are an overall better design. I owned
| 3 T410s for many years and repaired them and kept them
| going so I'm very familiar with their design (And all the
| things that broke or failed over those years). The laptop
| I'm using right now is a 2013 MBP (which has been my
| daily driver for a long time with zero issues) and I have
| a new 13" M3 MBP work laptop (a great laptop) and another
| 2012 MacBook right here with me.
|
| I agree 6 year OS software support isn't good but the
| 2013 machine still got updates up to the end of last year
| (though can't run the very latest OS). That said, as long
| as applications run on the older OS it's not necessarily
| such a huge problem unless some critical security issues
| pops up.
| stouset wrote:
| I've been an Apple user since the Core 2 Duo laptops. So
| something like 20 years. I've owned countless laptops,
| every other iPhone since launch, two iPads, two watches
| (a first gen and last year's), two HomePods, a pair of
| AirPods Pro and Max, a Time Capsule, two Apple TVs,
| and... lord knows I'm missing multiple somethings.
|
| The only time I've had to use support is when I've broken
| an iPhone screen to have it replaced.
| jajko wrote:
| Dude Samsung can last a ton if you treat them normally,
| you are just confirming what OP was saying. One random
| example - I saw SGS II working 12 years with same
| battery, flawlessly. I am not even going into phones
| comparison, enough folks around who are not happy or
| migrating back to Androids for various reasons.
|
| As for laptops I guess you are joking, I've yet to meet a
| single big corporation in Europe where macbooks are even
| allowed on premises, unless its some web app testing team
| or similar.
|
| Some folks live in great echo chambers, I agree this site
| is a massive one for Apple. That's a simple fact,
| comments here confirm this. Which is fine on its own, but
| its not balanced truth you often find here.
| EasyMark wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I have 4 macs notebooks, 1 dating back to
| 2011 and they all still work, well the 2011 has to stay
| plugged in because the battery is basically useless at this
| point but it makes a not too bad NAS with linux running on
| it.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The prose here insisting the damage is done comes off as
| clueless when the apparent scale of the damage is trivially,
| if not undetectably, small.
| yoyopa wrote:
| you don't say... a guy saying "the wife" and talking about
| linux isn't clued in?
| pmarreck wrote:
| Linux fan but hard pass on this. Apple's ecosystem
| integration across their devices (I have Apple Watch, an M1,
| an iPhone 15 Pro Max, a couple Apple TV's etc.) is
| unparalleled. And the iPhone camera is excellent for
| documenting my rapidly-growing, almost 3 year old kid. Also,
| Livephotos kick ass. Every single Android phone I've used is
| annoying AF and I hate having to fix issues with them when
| I'm at my in-laws' house (her dad insists on them for... some
| irrational reason).
|
| Of course, I do sync my entire photo library with both Google
| (preserves the Livephotos) and Amazon (does not preserve
| livephotos), because I once lost an entire photo library due
| to a fuckup combined with an Apple bug. And I use non-Apple
| services for music and video.
|
| Maybe just don't put all your eggs in one basket to the
| extent you can.
| talldayo wrote:
| Sounds like the same shtick I heard from Windows 8
| apologists in the past. "Yes, yes, Microsoft is a ghoulish
| company; but look at how my laptop connects to my Xbox!"
|
| Apple's whole premium marketing shtick feels gone. Not only
| has the halo-effect worn off now that _everyone_ owns an
| iPhone, but they 're portioning up their own operating
| system to endless service integration and nonsense software
| offerings. Who the hell is paying for Apple Arcade? What
| about Apple Music Voice? Does anyone still pay for Apple
| Fitness+ without having forgot to unsubscribe? The whole
| thing reeks of Microsoft trying to market Groove Music and
| Onedrive to an audience of confused senior citizens and
| barely-literate pre-teen gamers.
|
| Their hardware revenue is threatened, their software
| revenue is headed towards the toilet, and their latest
| product category is a non-starter. If you aren't preparing
| to see the worst of what Apple is capable of, I advise you
| get ready (and perhaps an alternative smartphone you feel
| comfortable using).
| willis936 wrote:
| Stories like this is why I keep a used pixel 6 in my backpack.
| fsflover wrote:
| Instead, you could choose a GNU/Linux phone as a backup and
| benefit from lifetime updates.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| wtf? They destroyed your property and then started threatening
| you with legal notices?
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Have you checked their terms and condition? There might be a
| clause that says - since you are using their devices you
| forfeit claim to your own backyard ;-)
|
| J/K. But since it's Apple, nothing is far off.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > they just started sending me a legal notice instead
|
| This is bizarre and fucked up even from Apple's standard. Did
| you get to know anything about it - what happened? Did those
| legal notices seem to be automated? Any inkling what could have
| triggered it (False alarm? And Apple is known to hide its
| incompetence in this manners)?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Something seems missing from your story. They banned you for
| downloading two apps, or was something else involved? Or you
| still have no idea why they banned you in the first place? Just
| curious.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Probably installed fortnite.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Of course there is much missing from his story, these tech
| corps keep the victims of their incompetence in the dark so
| not even the victims know the full story.
| j45 wrote:
| The cloud is someone else's computer, but I thought customers
| owned their phones.
| hx833001 wrote:
| You should email Tim Cook. Executive relations can often fix
| problems. Edit: amazing that someone downvoted advice. This
| site has some problems.
| Teever wrote:
| Class actions just make lawyers rich.
|
| A real way to hit these kinds of companies selling defective
| products is to coordinate simultaneous small claims courts
| cases around the world.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm curious, would you be willing to share the gist of the
| legal notice(s)? Even just broad strokes categorization of what
| they claim, perhaps...
|
| - unauthorized access related to the lockouts and support
| requests you already described
|
| - unauthorized activity related to something else you didn't
| mention (even if unfounded)
|
| - some other unrelated but specific violation of TOS or other
| cited rules (even if unfounded)
|
| - zero additional information, perhaps reiterating some
| previous finding (even if unfounded)
|
| I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, but I agree with
| another commenter that it sounds like something is missing from
| your story. Details like these might help us understand how
| your experience fits the pattern of accounts in the article.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179105
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What were the apps, and what did you (either explicitly or
| inadvertently) allow them to access?
|
| I am wondering if your account was collateral damage of an
| automated system detecting misbehavior of the apps.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| > _... a class action lawsuit_
|
| After filling out an online form you receive in a year or so,
| then waiting another three, you'll get a check in the mail for
| $2. Justice! Hooray!
|
| The only people class action lawsuits benefit are the lawyers.
| amelius wrote:
| You just paid $1000 for something you don't own now.
|
| Sounds like you have been scammed. Maybe just try to get your
| money back?
| switch007 wrote:
| I'm so glad I recently made the decision to leave the Apple
| ecosystem. I'm fed up paying a large premium for a lot of
| expensive marketing.
|
| Apple HomeKit has completely busted for me. I've done hard resets
| of all TVs + HomePods 4 times, tried 5GHz and 2.2GHz....no
| difference. It's Apple's problem - clearly with either their
| latest OS versions and/or their cloud. I just had to replace a TV
| remote that didn't even last a year.
|
| Anyone want to buy a MBP, iPhone 8, iPhone 12, iPad, 5 HomePods
| and an Apple TV...? :)
| heyoni wrote:
| Sometimes HomeKit will pick the lowest power device to be the
| hub causing everything to stop working. The only fix is to find
| out which device that is and power cycle it.
| switch007 wrote:
| Yup, have read that useless advice a lot. Did you read that I
| did 4 hard resets of all HomeKit devices? Of course multiple
| reboots too
|
| Even if that were the cause of many issues, it seems like a
| really simple fix to adjust the selection algorithm. So why
| haven't Apple done it?
| user3939382 wrote:
| My phone was spontaneously logged out of iMessage yesterday which
| has never happened before.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| From the anti fraud pov, giving explaination is "tipping".
|
| From user pov, this is frustrating.
|
| I can't see how this can be solved.
| api wrote:
| It's happened with Google too. The use of these huge companies as
| ID providers is not a great idea, especially given that they
| practically have no tech support.
|
| Apple will let you talk to a human I guess but you have to make
| an appointment. Google I have no idea.
| barlog wrote:
| Strangely, I don't see this in Japan?
|
| Any Japanese users out there?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I was thinking about something related yesterday. It is amazing
| how "big social silos "Google", "Facebook"
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I was thinking about something related yesterday. It is amazing
| how big "Internet Silos" Google, Facebook, etc provide close to
| no customer support services and that we "users" have accepted
| this.
|
| Getting cut off from one of these places can have a huge impact
| on people. They happen without warning and often without
| explanation.
|
| I think they ought to be forced to be more open around the
| process and how to get help in general.
|
| For Apple I have usually managed to get a hold of some support.
| Often not helpful but at least somebody.
|
| With Google and Facebook I have never been able to find anyone.
|
| Sameting that is demonstrated on this site frequently when
| someone will post a plea for someone who knows people at Google
| who they can't contact on their behalf. Since they can't get hold
| of anyone themselves.
|
| (Yes I am sure its covered in the EULA several times that there
| is close to no support)
|
| (For Google Workplace it is usually possible to get a hold of
| someone.)
| rchaud wrote:
| > Google, Facebook, etc provide close to no customer support
| services and that we "users" have accepted this.
|
| This is why I've always rejected the concept of vendor
| "ecosystems" and cloud-first SaaS solutions for my personal
| computing. I've also designed my life so it's not dependent on
| having uninterrupted access to Facebook or Gmail.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I was thinking about something related yesterday. It is
| amazing how big "Internet Silos" Google, Facebook, etc provide
| close to no customer support services and that we "users" have
| accepted this.
|
| That's because you aren't the "customer", you're the product.
| The people paying the bills for Google and Facebook are the
| actual customers.
|
| With Apple it's supposed to work differently - the user _is_
| the customer.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| That doesn't really make sense as I pay for GCP and Google
| Enterprise. They specifically refer to me as a customer and
| in a roundabout way I pay for their bills. Your statement,
| while a neat adage, doesn't reflect the complexity of it all.
| courseofaction wrote:
| These corporations are actively hostile to users and it's
| insane that anyone trusts or interacts with them.
|
| Recently when setting up GrapheneOS (android OS distro), my
| login to google play services was delayed by 24 hours for
| 'security concerns', after authenticating via youtube app. (Try
| to go OSS? Here's a 24 hour ban).
|
| It's funny because the forced youtube app authentication itself
| is not a security measure, it's a dark pattern to force the
| youtube app to be installed and opened. Logging in by phone or
| email quietly doesn't work anymore, the SSO messages never
| reach their destination. I find it hard to believe that this is
| not representative of google's perverse incentives.
|
| Consistently disgusting, rapacious company.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| It's because we just assume that these services must be for
| free. Pay for them and the music starts to change...
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I'm guessing this is due to Apple's paranoia that someone might
| get an Apple ID and use iMessage without buying an Apple device.
| wepple wrote:
| Additional datapoint: my account just got locked, was forced to
| change password.
|
| I use a gmail email as my login
| someonehere wrote:
| I feel like these random behind the scenes issues happen a month
| or two before WWDC to give Apple the foundation they need to
| announce new services.
|
| I had read Apple is switching the name AppleID to be Apple
| Account or something similar at WWDC. Me thinks they are quietly
| pushing code that somehow is causing this for people.
|
| Maybe it's an age of account issue or some other commonality.
|
| I signed up for an at me account twenty years ago and still use
| that as my living and haven't had issues. Maybe icloud.com users?
| sjackso wrote:
| As a datapoint, yesterday's lockout affected my Apple ID that
| is based on a ~25-year-old mac.com address.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| As another datapoint, my account is equally old, also
| mac.com, and I have not been affected.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Tangential business idea: insurance against getting locked out of
| your Google, Apple or Microsoft account.
| accrual wrote:
| How could it work? It would seem the business would need to
| have some agreement or side channel with Google/Apple/Microsoft
| to bypass the issue. Something like "we will pay you
| $Amount/year to let us reset any agreed upon account". Then
| collect a monthly fee from the users to subsidize the expense.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Insurance, not fixing service. They'd collect enough data on
| signing the policy to be able to independently verify your
| ownership of the account, and in case the account gets locked
| in the future, you'll get an insurance payout to help you
| cope with the damage. Not that different from order kinds of
| property insurance.
| accrual wrote:
| Ah that makes sense, thanks for clarifying. It would be
| cool though - subsidize for some dedicated account
| "unlock/fix/repair" team at $CORP. They get paid a bunch to
| sit around and wait for incoming tickets, then actually
| help out versus stonewalling the user like Google does.
| amelius wrote:
| It could work like this. You pay a monthly fee. When you are
| locked out, then the insurance will cover the legal expenses.
| chiefgeek wrote:
| Happened to me while on holiday in Costa Rica. Was able to reset
| PW this morning, thank goodness.
| JattMannu wrote:
| Apple ID Outage: What to Do If You're Locked Out of Your Account
|
| https://www.thebugger.us/apple-id-outage-what-to-do-if-youre...
| delduca wrote:
| It happened to me last night! At that moment, I froze, thinking
| that somehow my password had leaked and someone was trying to
| brute-force my MFA. At the time, I was at a restaurant
| celebrating my son's birthday and couldn't change the password on
| my phone... So I just ignored it and when I got home, I changed
| the password on my MacBook without any trouble.
|
| This morning, as a precaution, I changed all my important
| passwords.
|
| Good to know it wasn't just me.
| epolanski wrote:
| Been locked for almost 3 months between November 2022 and January
| 2023.
|
| Apple is crazy. My iPad with the authenticator broke, and even
| though I filled endless forms, verified emails and phone number
| they just keep sending me emails I was gonna be called by support
| at a date 3 weeks away.
|
| Got no call, restarted the procedure. Got called in January, and
| it was an automatic voicemail or something..
|
| I literally couldn't use my work machine (had a backup desktop to
| use).
|
| Needless to say, except for the MBP I sadly need for work I'm not
| giving apple a dime for my life.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Please file an FTC complaint.
|
| https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Same sentiment here. Actively working to reduce dependence on
| anything FAANG.
| sleight42 wrote:
| WTF? Apple used to have amazing support, just a few years ago!
|
| My experience, on the phone and via Message, has been uniformly
| garbage for years.
|
| It used to be that you could go to the Apple Store and the
| "Geniuses" or their management would make it right.
|
| What the hell happened??
| indymike wrote:
| We need to get a legal advocacy group started for dealing with
| digital rights (EFF isn't getting it done with consumer rights).
| A couple of well-funded lawsuits on behalf of wronged users will
| fix this with all of the vendors. This kind of thing should never
| happen.
| codedokode wrote:
| I hope Linux will never switch to cloud accounts.
| archsurface wrote:
| One of the things that helped push me away from Apple was the
| crazy circles the ID system would have me going around in. It's
| been too long to remember the details but it was madness.
| grork wrote:
| What's the overlap between people who had their password reset,
| and people who used/signed up for Beeper iMessage verification?
| js4ever wrote:
| none it seems, some users that just bought an iphone 2 days ago
| had the issue today in this thread
| easeout wrote:
| I'm glad this is news, because it means I was probably affected
| by a mistake and not a specific attack. Nonetheless you can't go
| spooking your users like this.
| jms703 wrote:
| What makes you think this isn't an attack?
| k8svet wrote:
| Lol and I got some pushback here for saying Apple ID was not a
| serious product and that I wouldn't trust Apple to use Apple Pay
| even if they let me as a lowly Android user.
|
| I mean, ffs, the only 2fa option for an Apple ID is SMS auth.
| Just not a serious company when it comes to actual services.
| schnatterer wrote:
| Happened to me too with apple music in November 23. They just
| deleted my account with my playlists and listening history. Even
| support couldn't tell me why after countless calls and emails.
| This implicitly canceled my yearly subscription and refunded only
| a small part after I requested it. I learned my lesson about
| Apple.
| Retric wrote:
| Take it as a lesson about SaaS and closed ecosystems in general
| not just Apple.
|
| Any dependencies on 3rd parties can be broken at any time
| without recourse be that Steam, Amazon, Google, Facebook,
| Apple, or less obvious services on smart devices.
| schnatterer wrote:
| True! If read before about similar cases with other SaaS,
| e.g. the famous one about google drive:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-
| cs...
|
| Difficult to avoid though for some cases like streaming.
| Fortunately I had a backup of my playlists. Still annoying. I
| wonder if those kinds of things happen with spotify as well.
| Because once your subscription ends you're only relegated to
| a free account, not deleted.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| I had Apple Music back in 2018. Unsubbed and never used the app
| till March 2024 when I got a free trial. It had my complete
| playlists and history from then.
|
| Sounds like a lie everything disappeared after 3 months
| schnatterer wrote:
| That's interesting! Before the disaster was also my second
| subscription. Now that you say it, some data was left. Not
| the playlists but some listening history. Might be that they
| only delete the iTunes-related stuff.
|
| Maybe if I subscribed again, there still would be something.
| But I won't.
|
| The support person on the phone also told me that everything
| gets deleted once the subscription ends, even when it's by
| mistake. Which seems to have been the case with me.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I wish there was a crowdsourced site, similar to Down Detector,
| that tried to estimate how common these issues are.
|
| In particular, an attempt to normalize the data to stave off
| reporting biases you get when reading the comments section in HN,
| Reddit, etc.
|
| It feels like medical conditions... without statistics, there's
| just too many of them to be fearful of. Not that this issue isn't
| worth criticism and discussion. But I can't tell if I really
| ought to care personally right now or not. Life's just a wee bit
| too short to act on every report.
| someguydave wrote:
| you are basically asking for multiple companies to give up
| their crown jewels for free
| standardUser wrote:
| I understand why people enjoy Apple products, but I will never
| understand why people defend the company when we all know, often
| through direct personal experience or the experience of someone
| we know, that the wealthiest company is the world has chosen to
| provide insultingly miserable customer support as a business
| decision.
| zac23or wrote:
| Apple is like a religion. An Apple user told me "Apple never
| makes mistakes" during the Antennagate. I never forgot that,
| and I try not to have conversations with Apple fans after that.
| trogdor wrote:
| >An Apple user told me "Apple never makes mistakes" during
| the Antennagate. I never forgot that, and I try not to have
| conversations with Apple fans after that.
|
| Someone made an absurd statement to you about Apple, so you
| have spent the last fourteen years trying to avoid
| conversations with people who like Apple products?
| hu3 wrote:
| Absurd? Yes. And common.
|
| It's not rare to read comments to the effect of:
|
| "Why are you, a single person, doubting the decision a
| trillion dollar company? Certainly they know best".
|
| edit: Algolia for the win. Quick search [1] returned this
| pearl from 7 days ago [2]:
|
| > What would you have them do? Sacrifice a trillion dollar
| business in token protest? You're just a keyboard warrior
| with no point at all who would make the same choice and
| justify it the same way you imagine I do if you were ever
| in the position they are.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tru
| e&que...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40098425
| zac23or wrote:
| > Someone made ...
|
| This example demonstrated to me that Apple is a religion,
| after many other examples. Try reading Apple's blogs, it's
| crazy.
|
| I recommend not trying to talk to extremists in any area.
| Your life will be much better.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| There are no rules in love and OS wars.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| I think it's because the vast, vast majority of Apple users
| never need to deal with customer service, and those who do can
| usually go to the Apple Store and have a pretty good
| experience.
|
| (Please don't reply to this with your anecdotes about the time
| you had a bad experience at the Apple Store. I'm not saying
| they're perfect. But these situations in the OP are rare.)
| adamomada wrote:
| Just the fact that they operate in the real physical world is
| a huge benefit for a LOT of people who are trying to use
| technology they didn't grow up with.
| foobiekr wrote:
| My apple support experiences have been very good. I don't know
| that at all.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Putting the Genius Bar into widely accessible Apple Stores is a
| business decision meant to provide useful support, not
| insultingly miserable.
|
| That said, not everyone needing support has access to a Genius
| Bar, and not every Genius Bar employee knows every possible
| answer to every possible question.
|
| But, to claim they chose to be insulting is just mistaken.
| samatman wrote:
| Personally, the disconnect is all the excellent customer
| service I've received from Apple in the 21 years I've been
| using their products. This includes two repairs on nine
| computers, and one battery replacement on an old phone. And the
| time that a major point release of the OS got stuck moving
| around my homebrew directory and hung. That, and the butterfly
| keyboard that needed replacing, were annoying. But the customer
| service was first rate.
| FZ_BA wrote:
| Former Beeper mini users?!
| j45 wrote:
| This makes me want to minimize my touchpoints with any of any
| cloud services of the hardware I purchase to ensure I can't be
| locked out of my life for 18-24 hours. | Some people have to take
| care of critical dependants. I don't exist and serve at the
| pleasure and convenience of any aspiring digital identity
| provider. I actually never wanted any of them to be my digital
| identity.
|
| What's convenient may also be a bigger security gap and impact
| than many ppl realize.
|
| The recent threads about PalmOS phones seem timely in hindsight.
| With Palm devices, you installed apps yourself with a sync cable
| to your computer, and there was no convenient app store, no one
| could lock you out of your smart phone and your life. Maybe
| that's an option that should come back. iTunes used to backup and
| sync just fine.
|
| If there's no real acknowledgement or detailed coming out about
| this, it's very possible it's a cybersecurity incident of some
| kind that is serious enough. And it's not just an Apple thing.
| This has or will happen with every digital identity provider.
|
| There's no one to really pick the phone or answer an email at
| google or apple when it comes to your digital identity that they
| want to be holders and providers of.. At least with the
| government there's a DMV or registry to go to.
| throwaway918274 wrote:
| I got locked out my apple account the other day while trying to
| login to webmail - thankfully I was able to just unlock it again
| by reseting my password using my iphone. Kinda terrifying.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Then I believe it's slightly better to use a non-iCloud.com
| emails as iCloud accounts. At least one less reason in the scheme
| of single point Apple ID failure.
| infogulch wrote:
| The tech sector desperately needs due process. By regulation if
| not voluntarily.
| drewg123 wrote:
| Apple support is useless. My partner lost her phone with
| AppleCare loss & damage coverage. She hadn't synced to iCloud in
| quite a while, so she delayed reporting it lost/stolen (as that
| flow wipes the phone). After ~4 months she gave up on finding it,
| and reported it stolen.
|
| This started a Kafkaesque process where the Apple site for
| reporting your phone lost and initiating a claim with AIG failed
| to work because the phone had been lost for more than 3 months.
| Support was useless, they pointed the finger at AIG. AIG pointed
| the finger right back. Several escalations further and 6 months
| later, we still have no replacement phone.
|
| I'll never, ever get Applecare again.
| Aaronn wrote:
| Reporting the phone as lost does not wipe the phone. That is a
| separate step.
| drewg123 wrote:
| There is a big thing in the reporting your phone lost &
| asking for a replacement that says it will wipe it...
| blueprint wrote:
| this actually sounds like the sort of thing they might do if some
| master key that they were storing for some subset of accounts was
| internally breached, and they had to force a password reset on
| them.
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