Nick Lockwood

They aren't some arbiter of moral authority. Their only objective should be to keep the App Store safe, not ensure the guilty are punished.

If Kapeli had been trying to pull some trick with one legit account and one dodgy one, shutting down the dodgy one addresses the problem.

And even then, treating the apps from that account like malware makes no sense. Why punish the customers who bought them?

@nicklockwood Probably just how the system works and they don’t want to fix it

@nicklockwood In this case, yes. But I’d bet it is very common for scammers and such to reuse cards/devices, and we don’t see those because

@nicklockwood they just disappear from the App Store when they get caught.

.@SteveStreza I can see that it would make sense to track serial abusers and prevent them from creating more accounts, but this wasn't that.

@nicklockwood Well the flaw wasn’t _really_ in linking accounts as much as the fact that Apple didn’t communicate the issue to all accounts.

@SteveStreza @nicklockwood we need a way to know when linking occurs so we can appeal that link, or remove old links.

@jamayers @SteveStreza I don't see how that would work. The link isn't like a linked iTunes account. They are trying to detect fraud.

@jamayers @SteveStreza if there was a way to disavow association with other accounts, scammers with multiple accounts would *always* do it.

@nicklockwood Same, except instead of not being sure I agree, I strongly disagree.

@CastIrony me too, I was just being British.

@nicklockwood @CastIrony don't you think it's pretty common that scammers would set up multiple App Store accounts and that would stop them?

@bpapa @CastIrony I think it's reasonable to use that signal to *investigate* the other accounts, but not as grounds for shutting them down.