Completely, 100% agree with galacticpony. This whole story sounds suspect and I'm falling square on Apple's side here. Kapeli set up a relative with a developer account AND that relative was involved in fraudulent activity that benefits Kapeli and/or damages his competitors? Either Kapeli is lying and did set up his relative to help him out with fraudulent reviews, or he was so negligible so as to risk damage to his status with Apple by hooking up an untrustworthy relative and then felt like he had every right to act indignant when Apple called him out on it AND gave him a chance to make it right?

Sorry, not buying it.

This may be hard to relate to from a First World context, but Kapeli lives in Romania where only 27% of the population owns bank accounts yet alone credit cards.[1] In many parts of the world, financial products are shared by families, even extended families.

This does not completely absolve Kapeli, but the bigger problem here is that Kapeli is (was) a top developer on Apple's platform and had oodles of credibility. He deserved a better investigation than Apple gave him, and to at least have his own ("linked") account notified of the problem before getting banned.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_373_en.p...

No excuse, sorry, especially since it's not at all clear that he's not lying. I'm not saying he is but it can't be ruled out. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, if it's true that he did innocently help out a relative and had absolutely no idea what that person was up to, then why not show some contrition and just get the problem resolved?

If I bring my cousin with me to a party at a friend's house and he trashes the place and gets into fights, you can sure bet I'm going to be apologizing like heck to the host, cleaning the place up, and trying to make things right. Would all people do that? Maybe not ... but don't go complaining that the host never invited you back if you didn't.

Why didn't they contact his "primary" account via its registered email address? They shut down two accounts but only contacted the first. The analogy would be better as I'm invited to a party and I bring my cousin. I leave after an hour. My cousin causes a bunch of damage to the host's place after I leave. Then two years later the host comes to my place of business and burns it to the ground and says I should've listened to the demands they made to my cousin over the last two years.

That is a bad analogy. This is case of mistaken identity, not a bad referral. Ask yourself, why are not giving this respected developer the benefit of the doubt?

A better analogy would be: You loaned your underage friend your ID 4 years ago and forgot about it. They proceeded to behave badly at a bar over a period of years without your knowledge. Then the bar owner confuses your identity based solely on that ID, despite your picture looking nothing like them and you being a well known and respected regular, and bans you without notice. Then they admit it wasn't you that trashed the place, but won't let you in until you state that the bar made no mistake in confusing you for that person.

This is also a bad analogy. The other account who is supposedly outside of the control of Kapeli, is involved in thousands of fraudulent ratings manipulations of Kapeli's apps. How likely is it that if the account were so totally out of Kapeli that this cousin would waste their time doing this? It's highly unlikely.

Not Kapeli's apps. There is no indication that there were fraudulent reviews of Dash, nor would it even make sense for there to be since it's so popular. Kapeli's own account was only used for Dash.

You can get a tool to extract a license key on the dev's website.

Please read and listen again. He did not register the account, nor use his credentials (if he had, apple's contact attempts would've reached him). He only paid for it, and donated hardware.

The bank account used is credentials and Apple considers both accounts to belong to (quote) "the same legal entity" based on that fact. This is the way Apple conducts business.

"This is the way Apple conducts business" is not a justification for conducting business that way.

Kapeli is in Romania where credit card ownership is less common, and the "legal entity link" we're talking about is just a nominal $99/fee and some older devices. Moreover, Apple is admitting they they see them as distinct accounts, only notified one of them, and completely ignored the fact that Kapeli's side of the linked accounts had high credibility.

It sounds like Apple is desperately trying to justify the not-very-smart algorithm of an automated "booter" program rather than giving Kapeli the respect and due diligence that he deserves as a top developer.

No. You can use a different bank account to get paid and use a different name for your developer account from credit card used. You can even use a prepaid credit card(But you have to provide ID). In this case, it's clear that the account names were different. Also it seems the bank accounts to get payment from apple were different(Otherwise they would mention it). And the only links were the credit card and some devices(only apple and the developer know how many devices and in some extent)

It is indeed the way they do, but you are saying he should've known that, when he had in fact no way of knowing.

It is certainly knowable that the identity on the credit card is part of the verification process and that it must match his own. If the name he entered wasn't his own, the verification would likely have been denied: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6238222?tstart=0

That's why I'm suspicious as to which name he actually entered.

No, The name of the account and the credit card holder can be different.You just need to provide government ID and your memebershit will be delayed: https://developer.apple.com/support/purchase-activation/

In this case, it seems the two accounts used different names otherwise they would mentioned it already because it's huge evidence that the accounts are linked.

In the U.S., you can add authorized users to your credit cards, and they typically send you new cards that just have a different name, but for which the rest of the information is identical (same number, same CVV code, same expiration).

At least this was the case with the cards issued for authorized users I added to my Citi Double credit card account.

So you could have a single card number with multiple valid names/users.

Suspicion is fine with me. You could ask him via his twitter account. :)

I don't use twitter, but here is a tweet that suggests it isn't just about the credit card: https://twitter.com/JamesNnnn/status/785645305396027392

That's interesting and kinda important evidence that it's more about credit card and some devices.

I think I'm much less invested in this than you two but I can say that it would strike me as very unusual to pay for someone else's account with Apple.

For example, Mithaldu, if an anonymous outsourcing party rendered you a service, than rather than wire them money or pay via paypal, would you be okay with paying for an apple account with them, with no further relationship, and you don't even know who they are? Probably not.

I think we can all agree that yes, he "should have" thought about this implication of trust.

It doesn't strike me as unusual. I've paid for tools and training for relatives and friends. A membership seems no more unusual.

[edit: given the down votes, I guess the HN crowd has rich friends or doesn't do mentoring. Sometimes the people you sponsor don't get it right]

Not sure why people are downvoting - they should be commenting if they disagree!

A developer account + some old test devices sounds like a great birthday or christmas present!

You write "for relatives and friends", implying a measure of trust. You don't write "for strangers I didn't know." Would you have?

From his response "helped a relative get started by paying for her Apple’s Developer Program Membership using my credit card. I also handed her test hard"

It was a relative, so I don't get your question's relevance to the situation.

sorry, I missed that part. I straight-up don't believe that their relative engaged in fraudulent activity related to Dash (such as leaving negative reviews of competitors) by complete coincidence and at arm's length. I didn't read all the information carefully though.

> I straight-up don't believe that their relative engaged in fraudulent activity related to Dash (such as leaving negative reviews of competitors) by complete coincidence and at arm's length

You might want to read the rest, the relative was boosting their own apps. Dash was not part of scenario just affected by the end result.

You missed the other discussion which mentions he's Romanian, and very few Romanians have their own banking services, and in fact share banking services among family members.

Last time I bought a dev account to the App Store I had to pay with a credit card in my name. My employer was willing to pay for it and would have preferred to pay on the company credit card but the App Store explicitly didn't allow 3rd party payment.

This was made abundantly clear when I signed up.

According to this, it's fine to use another person's CC as long as you provide govt id such that they can tie your account to a real person (and not the CC).

https://developer.apple.com/support/purchase-activation/

That's your interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. If your interpretation was correct, shouldn't the person you replied to have been informed of that possibility?

> He has registered an account using his credentials

Where are you getting that? In his blog posts, he only mentioned the common thing between the accounts were his credit card and old test devices he handed off - how do those qualify as "his credentials"? He explicitly mentioned he wasn't aware that his account and his alleged relatives account were linked until after his account was blocked.

You are right - he doesn't understand the problem - and neither do I. With the information that I have so far, it seems that Apple has set the bar for guilt too low, and the whole process is extremely opaque.