Comment by postalcoder
18 days ago
Apple also makes it a biznatch to make a developer account separate from your personal account. In Apple's ideal world, multiple accounts should in no circumstance ever exist. I, in an ideal world, would agree with this. But we live in this world, where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.
And yet Apple CREATED the multiple-accounts problem for millions of people by implementing their idiotic "Apple ID must be an E-mail address" policy.
So of course people thought that when they changed jobs, cable companies, or whatever... they needed to create a new Apple ID with their new E-mail address. This was reinforced when Apple further stupidified their policy by requiring your ID to be a WORKING E-mail address (originally it didn't actually have to work).
After the outcry over people's App Store and other purchases being scattered across multiple IDs, Apple finally publicly and huffily declared that they weren't going to fix the problem they created by letting people consolidate accounts.
The moral: Don't force people to use E-mail addresses as user IDs. It's stupid on several levels.
> Apple finally publicly and huffily declared that they weren't going to fix the problem they created by letting people consolidate accounts.
They somewhat changed that. It now is possible to move purchases between accounts. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/117294. Looks quite cumbersome to do, and will not apply to everybody (“If an Apple Account is only used for making purchases, those purchases can be migrated to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them.”, “This feature isn’t available to users in India.”)
It's not super difficult if you have an Apple ID from many years ago that you bought media with and then have a different Apple ID that you use for everything. Which isn't that uncommon for anyone who used iTunes and bought music or media and then forgot their ID and just made a new one when they got a iPhone or Macbook. Was able to transfer all my purchases to my main account pretty easily.
The real downside is if you have two fully active Apple IDs. Then things like calendars, photos, email, etc are still stuck on the other account until you export it. Which can be a pain since you have to sign out of your main account, sign into the old account and export, then sign back into the main account.
What's weird, and I'm not sure if it's a documented or undocumented feature, but the account I am logged into on the App Store differs from the one logged into on the system. The system Apple ID is setup with Family Sharing, and the users are able to use apps purchased with the secondary Apple ID.
I haven't transferred the purchases or anything either. The two Apple IDs have different purchases on them, and those on Family Sharing are able to access both.
Interesting. But WTF is a "primary" Apple account? My original Apple ID isn't an E-mail address, so they forced me (and others in that situation) to create another one for iCloud because that one inexplicably has to be an E-mail address.
I use both for quite a few things. Which one is "primary?"
2 replies →
> of course people thought that when they changed jobs, cable companies, or whatever... they needed to create a new Apple ID with their new E-mail address.
This belief is rampant amongst 90% of the general public. I had to spend an hour helping a friend last week who had created a new Cash App account to do their taxes, because they didn't prefer the old email address that was on their longstanding Cash App account. So now they have to keep 2 Cash App accounts forever. And to make things more fun, they're obsessed with phone numbers there, so adding the phone to the second account pulls it off the other account.
Oh, and digression but I have to vent: their login process on the web is, in some order: an SMS to your phone, another numeric to your email, and your password. All in succession, on every login.
Thanks for the anecdote backing up my longstanding suspicion on that.
This is also why using E-mail addresses as user IDs is monumentally stupid: People will think that they need to use their E-mail password, too. So now any entity with this ID policy becomes a gatekeeper not only to their own site or service, but the user's E-mail account.
One poor security regime or disgruntled employee at one obscure Web site can now enable identity theft on a grand scale, by exposing E-mail addresses and passwords.
There's a reason that banks and brokerages don't employ this ignorant policy. It's disappointing that Apple set such a poor example by implementing it. Then they had to run around trying to mitigate the harm with 2FA and other measures, after high-profile "hacking" attacks on journalists and celebs.
It’s also a huge pain for those of us who might regularly visit or live part of the year in another country.
I basically need two Apple IDs because switching the region for your App Store is very inconvenient if you have any subscriptions.
In the end, I have separate Apple IDs for each country.
And Apple won't let you add all your "trusted phone numbers" to all those accounts. So, if you are in country A and your country B phone can't receive SMSs, and you get a new device, you can't log into country B account because 2FA via SMS does not work. (And no, you can't just make multiple accounts on a MacBook or other device that supports multiple accounts for non-SMS 2FA; login fails.)
Pff, Apple can't even keep your contacts intact if you go abroad.
I traveled to Australia and got a local SIM. Suddenly every incoming call was from an unknown caller, even though every one was in my address book. Apple is too stupid to handle international calling in the 2020s. I mean... WTF?
Then again, this is the same company that "helpfully" changes all your calendar appointment times when you travel to a different time zone... with NO WAY TO PREVENT IT. So if you go east, you're going to miss any events you set up in advance... including flights home.
> And yet Apple CREATED the multiple-accounts problem for millions of people by implementing their idiotic "Apple ID must be an E-mail address" policy.
Ironically they then relented only for India and China because market share too sweet, so all auth developers now need to update the assumption that Apple auth users have an email address. Worst of both worlds :)
I help someone to setup Apple ID. His email address is already taken by someone else and user ID with that email cannot be created.
Maybe in the 90's before Gmail came about so everyone still used their university or ISP email accounts.
Hotmail came in the mid 90s, Yahoo Mail followed soon, I don't think Apple was cloudy at all back then.
I suppose those mail services were "cloud"...
Not sure what this is replying to...
1 reply →
I am facing this issue right now. I need to create a separate developer account because I am risk averse. Do I need a new phone number for this? Online some people say yes, others say no. I tried creating the account several times but it just doesn't work. At this point I am planning to just get a prepaid SIM card from US Mobile for the phone number.
Apple will allow you to have multiple Apple IDs tied to the same phone number -- my kids' ones have my number on them. So for some purposes it seems fine to just reuse the phone number for a second account -- like for your kids, or for a "sandbox" account to use testing your app so that you don't have to use your real iCloud account.
However, for your purpose of avoiding Apple's capricious BS, I probably wouldn't go that route since if their braindead fraud systems or braindead employees decide you're a threat actor they could definitely default to "Ban account. Find all their evil backup accounts that have the same phone numbers or contact emails and ban them too."
Thanks for highlighting this. I did not think about Apple/employee potentially linking phone numbers of different accounts and banning all of them.
I set up a couple developer accounts recently for my clients. Just use a new Google Voice number for 2FA. I had to live chat with Apple support to get past initial verification both times and after that setup went fine.
Thanks, that's great to know! I will take this route.
If you create your developer account in another country (or with a card from another country, who knows), the whole thing just crashes and the sign-in on the phone loops.
When encountering this, I updated the device which bricked the appstore, the device has to be fully reset if that happens.
>where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.
Is there any evidence of this happening with an actual legitimate gift card and bot one which was stolen or originally purchased via credit card fund.
Slightly off-topic, but stuff like this does not just happen at Apple.
When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, my wife bought it with her credit card and gifted the game to me. It was fine at first. I even managed to play through the game. However when coming back to the game a few months later (to see all the bugfixes), it was gone. I contacted the (gog) and they said it was removed due to automatic fraud detection and that the balance had been paid back to the original credit card (my wife's card, she had obviously not noticed this in her bank statement).
Point being automatic fraud detection systems can wipe out stuff you purchased even months after the fact (or in some cases lock your account)... It feels kafkaesque.
Since it's gog at least you could download the game and save it somewhere.
12 replies →
https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
> The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale)
>was already redeemed in some way
This is the important quote showing that the gift card was not legitimate.
14 replies →
this kind of stuff happens all the time across major companies with minimised support. sure your google account is likely to be there tomorrow but it's only a very good chance that it's not locked forever.
i would be surprised if there's any company with millions of users where .01 or .001 (still a LOT of users) just get screwed with zero recourse
Yes.
https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
That was already posted and it was not a legitimate gift card.
3 replies →
For Apple Business Manager, Apple forces you to create a separate new account.
Yes - all ABM accounts are Managed Apple Accounts, not Personal ones. You can’t mix and match (they each have different features).
The two are related. Apple doesn't want you having multiple accounts, because it wants to ban you for redeeming legitimate gift cards, not just one of your personas.