Apple blocks dev from all accounts after he tries to redeem bad gift card
- Reference: 1765821116
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/15/apple_dev_bad_gift_card_code/
- Source link:
This isn't just any developer, either: The unlucky Apple aficionado in this case is Dr. [1]Paris Buttfield-Addison , a Tasmania-based computer scientist who co-founded an award-winning game development company and has written [2]multiple books on developing for Objective-C, the Swift programming language, and iOS.
"I have effectively been an evangelist for this company's technology for my entire professional life," Buttfield-Addison said in a [3]blog post detailing his struggle with Apple's account system.
[4]
According to Buttfield-Addison, his account was flagged as "closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions" recently. The only thing he can link the issue to is his recent purchase and attempt to redeem a $500 Apple gift card to use to pay for his 6TB iCloud+ storage plan, which he said failed when he attempted to activate it.
[5]
[6]
Buttfield-Addison contacted the retailer, an unnamed "major brick-and-mortar retailer," which reissued the code after suggesting it may have been compromised. Shortly after that, he was locked out of his account.
The Apple developer said that he's been signed out of iMessage, can't access his iCloud account, is unable to access terabytes' worth of family photos stored on Apple servers, and has basically been blackballed from the Apple ecosystem.
[7]
"My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly," Buttfield-Addison said. "I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media."
He naturally reached out to Apple to see what happened, according to the blog post, but received little in the way of help, with support staff reportedly refusing to tell him why his account was banned and saying that escalating the matter "won't lead to a different outcome."
An Apple senior advisor reportedly told Buttfield-Addison to just create a new account – a piece of advice he said was "technically disastrous" for a number of reasons, including the possibility it would end his career as an Apple developer.
[8]
"Attempting to 'dodge' a ban by creating a new ID could lead to my Developer Program membership being permanently blacklisted, amongst other things," Buttfield-Addison said.
Buttfield-Addison wrote in an update to his blog post over the weekend that he had been in touch with a member of Apple's Executive Relations team, who said they were looking into the matter and would call him back on Monday, December 15, but he noted that things were "not looking good" after writing the Sunday update.
As of this writing, he still hasn't heard back. "No luck yet, and they don't seem positive," Buttfield-Addison told The Register .
Even if Apple manages to resolve the issue, Buttfield-Addison isn't sure he's going to take another chance on iBiz after this kerfuffle.
"I will leave as fast as I can even if this is fixed," he told us. "I do mean that literally."
He told us he's looking at switching to Linux for his laptops and an Android device for his future smartphone. It'll be hard, Buttfield-Addison noted, but he doesn't feel Apple has left him with much recourse.
"Yes, it'll be a shitshow, but how can I trust such an account again even if they fix it?" he told us.
Buttfield-Addison suspects he's become yet another victim of the automation of basic support functions that used to be the domain of human employees, though he's not sure that's the case. We've seen a similar mess recently on YouTube, where the platform [9]took down several Windows 11 workaround videos under its harmful-acts rule, only to reinstate them after public backlash and creator complaints raised questions about automated moderation.
[10]Humans stressed out by content moderation? Just use AI, says OpenAI
[11]John Henry still leading the race vs AI in customer service
[12]Humans make better content cops than AI, but cost 40x more
[13]Half of businesses rethink ditching humans for customer service bots
The YouTubers we covered and Buttfield-Addison are lucky enough to have a high profile that merits media attention, but if the average Apple customer has their account irrevocably suspended after purchasing a gift card that someone already registered through a scam, it's much harder to draw attention to the matter.
This incident also raises the specter of [14]questionable digital content ownership . We've already seen companies revoke ownership of media users thought they had purchased. But if Apple can wholesale ban you from accessing your personal files and family photos with no reliable channel to resolve a potential misunderstanding, you don't appear to own anything that isn't physical and held in your direct possession.
We contacted Apple about Buttfield-Addison's situation, and its broader policy on account suspensions and appeals, but haven't heard back. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://hey.paris/about/
[2] https://secretlab.games/books
[3] https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aUCTDsnaMCe6Qb6YOSkwCAAAAUI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aUCTDsnaMCe6Qb6YOSkwCAAAAUI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aUCTDsnaMCe6Qb6YOSkwCAAAAUI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aUCTDsnaMCe6Qb6YOSkwCAAAAUI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aUCTDsnaMCe6Qb6YOSkwCAAAAUI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/ai_moderation_youtube_windows11_workaround/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/16/gpt4_moderate_content/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/03/john_henry_ai_customer_service/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/08/humans_outperform_ai_models_brand_safety/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/11/gartner_ai_customer_service/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/22/opinion_column/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
His predicament's a strong argument for adopting the [1]Local First (LoFi) approach to software development and computer use ...
[1] https://lofi.so/
Are you saying that is not the norm?
You're joking right?
Oh. Dear. God.
Obviously not for some people.
Wrong word
Let me correct that. On reflection: Automated victim punishment
Re: Wrong word: DARVO
Deflect, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
I'm heavily into the Apple ecosystem and am generally happy with it. That said, this sort of thing terrifies me.
The old adage rears its head once again: the Cloud is just someone else's computer.
Live by the Apple...
Or by the Google... or Microsoft... or Amazon...
account bans
The account bans sometimes cannot be undone, regardless of assistance from any an all authorities.
Due to this, it is unwise in the extreme to ever leave significant [digital] assets behind one of these accounts.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-csam-account-blocked
I can't believe that someone (who appears to be) that smart / book learned would actually think that a corporation, any corporation in today's world, has your interests at heart enough to trust them with the ONLY copies your of digital data.
Really? And I'll [have to] say that again, louder: REALLY??
SMH
It just goes to show you that simply because you went to college, and have your fancy degree, doesn't really mean that you are that smart at all. "Common sense is not really that common", as my boss has said.
Oh, and BTW, that boss is also an Apple user :p
It's never a good look to sneer at another's misfortune.
Besides, having your stuff backed up doesn't necessarily mean you can use it - he mentions he's lost access to thousands of dollars worth of purchased software and media, which is likely tied irrevocably to his AppleID, meaning it's now bricked as it can't be transferred.
"It's never a good look to sneer at another's misfortune."
If that were true then the Germans would have never invented the word "schadenfreude" :p.
Calling out stupidity is a global exercise and always in good taste.
Stupidity maybe, but I don’t get the impression from the article that he was stupid. It doesn’t mention whether he has backups, just that he lost access to whatever was in the cloud.
I never get tired of saying it: So how's that cloud thing working for you?
Local copies of, almost, everything here
I keep local copies of everything I that I have in the cloud. Not much help when software phones home to check your account is authorised though. Apple's locked in and locked down attitude is a major reason I'll not use them. Microsoft is bad but compared to Apple they are the cuddly uncle with pockets full of sweets, next to the overbearing parent Apple.
Re: Local copies of, almost, everything here
Absolutely - my GDrive is an exact upload-mirror of both internal and external SDs on my main phone. Automatically updated six-hourly.
With a synced download-mirror that runs on my spare phone when I switch it on.
If I lost my current main phone - I'd just go home, fire up the spare and carry on as normal.
Most I could lose would be a few texts.
(Autosync/Drivesync does that BTW).
Re: Local copies of, almost, everything here
What about apps and media tied to your account?
Re: Local copies of, almost, everything here
In my case, what account?
Sync to local Nextcloud. Periodically, sync no 2 laptop to Nextcloud. Considering syncing local Nextcloud to remote instance but that wouldn't be on a big corp.
Snake is right in one respect: the bigger the supplier the worse the service.
Re: Local copies of, almost, everything here
I mean - yes, but you’re not an average user. Most people (including our hero mentioned in TFA) have a ton of DRM’ed or account-locked content that they would lose if their access was blocked.
Which is my point here really; for most people, it doesn’t matter if you have backups or not - if you use cloudy account-dependent services then you’re completely at the provider’s mercy if they one day decide they don’t like you.
Re: Local copies of, almost, everything here
"Microsoft is bad but compared to Apple they are the cuddly uncle with pockets full of sweets, next to the overbearing parent Apple."
That might be the case, but MS aren't really the equivalent here. Google/Alphabet/Android would be.
He isn't learning
Now Google will fuck him over.
Should have known better.
I'm no expert on anything, but even so I'm well aware that leaving your property exclusively with someone else is a risk not worth taking.
you don't appear to own anything that isn't physical and held in your direct possession
The 65c02 system is on my bench and the software for it is on local machines and backups.
Along with all my other software.
If it's not, I'm not a customer, I'm a hostage.
Tasmania-based evangelist
Two reasons he should know better than to get too close to devils.
And just like that
...Apple adopted Chinese social credit system.
"We've seen a similar mess recently on YouTube, where the platform took down several Windows 11 workaround videos".
I like the way Windows 11 are described here as what they really are: a malfunction needing a workaround.
I do think these companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google) have too much power over our devices. He purchased third-party apps from the app store, and he should have every right to enjoy them even if Apple has decided they don't trust him anymore due to the dodgy card.
Let the buyer beware.
While the author didn’t mention which big box store the gift card was purchased from. There’s no mention if the purchaser tried to get the retailer involved other than to get a new activation code. Did the retailer reach out to Apple on the customer’s behalf?
The overall lesson is why would anyone purchase a apple gift card from anyone other then Apple?
Hard lesson to learn but should have just bought it through Apple.
No one should buy gift cards, period.
Just give cash. Put it in snazzy little red envelopes like the Chinese do if you feel it is not pompous enough.
Well
The lesson here is to buy a apple gift card from apple. You aren’t buying gift cards for sizzler or Applebee’s.
Given the sheer volume of gift card scams out there the wisdom of not buying it directly from Apple is perplexing given the persons relationship with Apple as a developer.
Hard lesson but he did it to himself.
Ever the optimists...
"We contacted Apple... but haven't heard back"
Apple don't take it lightly to making fun of the founder.
[1]https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/07/reg_effort_to_attend_iphone_7_launch
[2]https://www.theregister.com/2007/06/13/humiliation_apple/
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/07/reg_effort_to_attend_iphone_7_launch/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2007/06/13/humiliation_apple/
Bizarre behaviour by Apple...
If the gift card is a scam (e.g. Apple think that someone has cracked their gift card numbering system and is issuing cards that Apple haven't yet issued) then why on earth do they think the poor sap redeeming the cards is in any way responsible?
Secondly, why not just refuse to honour the card? Why block the account, especially on a "first offence"?
But I'm sure hostile nation states are now rubbing their hands with glee: pesky journalist who won't shut up? Just register a dodgy gift card in his name and whammo, Apple will take them offline.
"I will leave as fast as I can even if this is fixed,"
Don't say that. Do it, but don't say it in advance. As to having only copies of terabytes of stuff on somebody else's computer - surely he should have known better.
Also, the purchaser of such a card is the one who's been scammed, having paid money for junk. This is automated victim blaming.