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Comment by GrifMD | Hacker News Reader

I feel your pain. I'm an American living in Australia, so I'm not as significantly affected. Still my Google account and Apple accounts are all US based. My Apple account is tied into a family account I share with my US based family. I cannot download specific apps that are only on the Australian Apple App Store. My Sony Android TV cannot download some Australian television apps.

I cannot purchase Audible audiobooks without VPN'ing back in to the US, even with credits I've accrued.

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I move between three countries but have to keep my account region to my family’s because of family sharing.

I keep three accounts for the three regions, two dummy and one main. One inelegant solution I found is to sign out of the main account, sign in with a dummy account and install the apps I need from that region and signing back in with the main account.

> I cannot download specific apps that are only on the Australian Apple App Store

That's awesome for tourists. Go for a few weeks and you can't access the local apps. Brilliant.

Yep, and some of them are quite important for tourists such as the national weather app (which has alerts for storms, flooding etc.).

Luckily these were easily side-loadable on an Android phone.

The mobile apps for my US and Taiwanese banks are both region-locked to the US and Taiwan. Once I switched my region to Taiwan the Ally app stopped getting updates and eventually wouldn't let me sign into my account anymore.

> I cannot download specific apps that are only on the Australian Apple App Store.

I wonder if this includes COVID contact tracing apps? It could be a very juicy story if so.

It does. I live in Germany, but am American. I couldn't download the EU Digital Vaccine Certificate app until I switched my Apple account from US to Germany...

Similar for me. My country of origin is the US, and my Apple account is connected to a US credit card. But I live in Israel and was vaccinated here. Since I am linked to the US App Store, I can't download the Israeli Vaccine Certification App ("Green Passport"). Nor can I easily switch my Apple account to Israel as I have several subscriptions that would need to be canceled.

Same here, but at least you can switch back to your original region once it downloads.

Have you considered going to the press with this story? It sounds like the kind of thing that could ultimately lead to a very critical piece in some major news media, which might push the tide back somewhat.

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