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generic92034

> If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans.

If you are trying to be a bad person you could weaponize that approach. You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o

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> You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o

99.999% chance they happily redeem them and go about their lives.

These stories, while frustrating, are clearly edge cases. Yes I know you can find more if you search social media, but I don’t think a lot of these HN commenters realize the volume of gift cards Apple sells and redeems without problem every day.

Maybe that hypothetical, bad person needs to find out what is triggering the account locking, first. Many small sums per gift card? A sum over a certain threshold? The point is, in reality it will not be up to pure chance.

However, I personally would not do that anyway.

In this case buy the gift card from some shady retailer with a one-time-use virtual card, and give this shady code to your friend. Or buy a physical card from aliexpress, the cheapest one with bad reviews.

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