20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse. Can you help? Email paris AT paris.id.au (and read on for the details). ❤️

I am posting this story as a warning and a call to action. Always have a backup plan.

I have three separate identical email accounts and I have two indepent copies of all my cloud data, which also make it three. I used to run two NAS devices with one additional backup, and these have now been in cold storage for more than ten years. I have never gone back to read any data from those.