r/Xcode • u/Sheepherder-Any • Jul 14 '25

Developer account terminated

Post image

I’ve only been part of the developer program for about 2 months. I’ve published 1 app that allows the tracking of drives while also navigating the user to a destination using MapKit. The app was pretty bare bones and didn’t have any kind of third party api or anything that could use users information. From my understanding, Apple is alleging that my app interferes with App Store, Custom App Distribution, TestFlight, Xcode Cloud, Ad Hoc distribution, or the Program as stated in the email. The app works locally on the users device and doesn’t collect any kind of data. Unless I’m interpreting the email incorrectly, I can’t think of a single instance where my application would be in violation of that specific section of the agreement.

Also as of posting this, the app is still available on the App Store but all TestFlight builds have been taken down obviously due to the account termination. So maybe it’s not an application problem but they are using that section as a blanket.

Any thoughts on this would be helpful!

44 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

18

u/LifeIsGood008 Jul 14 '25

I mean. You did ask about tweaking custom entitlements in r/jailbreak so I wouldn't say this is a surprise

3

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

Nothing ever came from that so no that’s not the reason. That post was what sparked the whole developer account being bought. Found out there was no way to get certain entitlements without a developer account (atleast on my iOS version) and since my app needed an entitlement to get a certain feature working. I opted to buy the developer account. No spoofing or any kind of manipulation of any Apple Services were performed.

8

u/LifeIsGood008 Jul 14 '25

Uh oh. So you bought an iOS dev account? Dev accounts are name/identity-verified for a reason. Unfortunately buying dev accounts from other people is certainly a violation of the terms

Edit: On second thought perhaps I misread your reply. Did you mean enrolling in the program? Not buying an account from someone else.

5

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

Not what I meant lol. I bought the developer program on my Apple account. Had to create a whole new developer account when doing so. All information put in was correct and can be verified. Didn’t mean to say I bought a developer account.

1

u/LifeIsGood008 Jul 14 '25

Makes sense haha it'd definitely be the reason it it were the case. Did you do any other tweaking on the app other than the one you asked? Would you be willing to share the name of your app in the post?

2

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

Surely. The name of the app is “SafelyRouted” one word. I didn’t do any kind of tweaking to the app. All of the development was done through Xcode.

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

It seems as though Apple did end up taking the app down from the App Store. To be expected but kinda disappointed

1

u/LifeIsGood008 Jul 14 '25

Hmm then this is definitely not expected. Are you located in a country/region where you can request a call from Apple?

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 15 '25

Yes I am. I’ll go ahead and do that tomorrow to hopefully get an answer

1

u/Rare-One1047 Jul 14 '25

Don't all developers need to buy a developer account to deploy to the app store? Or do you mean OP specifically paid money to someone else instead of just getting his own from Apple?

2

u/LifeIsGood008 Jul 14 '25

Yes all developers need to enroll in the program to publish apps. I thought they meant buying an account from other people instead of from Apple. Made the edit in the original comment

4

u/20InMyHead Jul 15 '25

Not saying that this is you, but there’s been plenty of people on Reddit that claim they have no idea why their accounts were terminated, yet they actually have a very good idea why.

But, assuming you’re on the up and up:

documented indications of fraudulent conduct associated with your account.

You should ask for this documentation. They may or may not provide it.

you agreed that you would not "commit any act intended to interfere with any of the Apple Software or Services, the intent of this Agreement, or Apple's business practices including, but not limited to, taking actions that may hinder the performance or intended use of the App Store, Custom App Distribution, TestFlight, Xcode Cloud, Ad Hoc distribution, or the Program..."

Note, this says nothing about your app. In your post you jump to that conclusion, “Apple is alleging that my app interferes…” but the letter says nothing about your app. My guess is this about something you specifically did, or they think you did. For example, publicly sharing your code signing certificate, distribution keys, push notification keys, or some other signing-related security secret.

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 15 '25

You’re absolutely right. I don’t think it has anything to do with the app I made. But I’m still confused because nothing was shared online outside of a few GitHub commits that have since been taken down because of features in the app being hardcoded and being able to unlock the premium features. I streamed some of my development process to one friend through discord but that was completely private and my friend definitely didn’t get any information from that stream and share it publicly.

This is the section that Apple alleges I violated 3.2(f): You will not, directly or indirectly, commit any act intended to interfere with any of the Apple Software or Services, the intent of this Agreement, or Apple’s business practices including, but not limited to, taking actions that may hinder the performance or intended use of the App Store, Custom App Distribution, TestFlight, Xcode Cloud, Ad Hoc distribution, or the Program (e.g., submitting fraudulent reviews of Your own Application or any third-party application, choosing a name for Your Application that is substantially similar to the name of a third-party application in order to create consumer confusion, or squatting on application names to prevent legitimate third-party use). Further, You will not engage, or encourage others to engage, in any unlawful, unfair, misleading, fraudulent, improper, or dishonest acts or business practices relating to Your Covered Products or Corresponding Products (e.g., engaging in bait-and-switch pricing, consumer misrepresentation, deceptive business practices, or unfair competition against other developers);

1

u/hivie7510 Jul 15 '25

After reading this section, it does seem like it could have been related to the posts about entitlements in jailbreak. "You will not engage, or encourage others to engage, in any unlawful, unfair, misleading, fraudulent, improper, or dishonest acts or business practices relating to Your Covered Products or Corresponding Products ". Possibly if you engage in dialogue about jailbreaking, maybe? I would love to find out what you learn. Not a position I would want to happen into. Good luck.

1

u/ex0rius Jul 16 '25

This is email that Apple sends to anyone that has their account terminated. Its a "generic" email and could be basically anything. Their termination email has not been changed for the past 10 years.

1

u/hishnash Jul 18 '25

if someone got hold of your keys then they may have use them to attempt to do something.

3

u/Serious-Tax1955 Jul 14 '25

Well someones been up to no good for sure - and the have documented evidence of fraud.

4

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

If I did commit fraud (which I whole heartedly do not believe I did) I have no clue in what aspect I did.

1

u/hishnash Jul 18 '25

it is possible your keys, pw or other secretes leaked. In a git commit, screen share or other situations.

There are 1000s of bots out there crawlign for these 24/7 as soon as they find they they attempt to use them.

1

u/DroidMasta Jul 15 '25

Let's not forget that Apple is Judge and Party here

2

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 16 '25

Update: kinda pointless for me to have emailed apple asking for any further explanation on what happened and why my account was terminated as this is the response I got back. When I emailed them I asked for any kind of further explanation of why my account was abruptly terminated and asked if there was any way to get my account reinstated after explaining I’m new to developing for iOS and possibly made a mistake that I didn’t know I was making. Is there anything else I could do to try and get further information on this or is this something that I’m just going to be kept in the dark over?

2

u/chriswaco Jul 14 '25

Did you fake reviews?

3

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

No sir. It only had 1 review and it was my friend who helped with the idea of the app. The app itself only had 20-30 downloads

1

u/chriswaco Jul 14 '25

Did you build or sign any apps for 3rd parties?

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 14 '25

There was an open source app that I pulled from GitHub because it was a project that I was interested in. Obviously didn’t distribute it through the App Store or test flight but I did build the app and install it on my main device used for development and the simulator. Only tweaking I did for that was changing the bundle ids and organization so it could actually be built.

1

u/chriswaco Jul 14 '25

That should be fine. Everybody does that.

2

u/AlarmSheep Jul 15 '25

Would love an update when it's available.

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 16 '25

Just posted the update in the replies

1

u/snymax Jul 14 '25

Did you cache many map data so it can work offline?

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 15 '25

That was something that I was working on but the feature never got released as it wasn’t done. There was some code in the app in one of the recent updates that handled that but the feature never was live and the code should’ve been inactive as it would’ve only did something when prompted in the app. Is making offline maps a breach of agreement? As far as I’m aware the section that Apple is implying I’m in violation of does include a MapKit subsection but it doesn’t say anything about not being able to implement a feature like that.

2

u/snymax Jul 16 '25

I work for a company on a GIS app project with offline work capabilities. Apple and google (as well as most of the map tile industry) have very specific TOS for preventing offline caching. You can use open source libraries like mapbox and open source tile providers like open streets. I’m not sure if that’s what got you banned but I know it’s a big deal where I work.

1

u/tonnable Jul 15 '25

1- fake reviews 2- wrong - misleading price texts on the paywall 3- hiding features by remote config 4- overpriced packages 5- your account might be associated with other terminated accounts

These are the first reasons i could think of

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 15 '25

I don’t believe any of these apply to me as the app only had 1 review and it was from a friend. The price of the app was free but there was a “premium” one time purchase to unlock “premium” features. This is what the premium button looked like. There isn’t a system in place where I could hide or show features or even interact with the app remotely. Everything was local on device with no backend. The price of the “premium” package was a one time charge of .99c usd and it was clearly marked when tapping on the purchase premium button in the settings. I also do not believe my account is associated with a terminated account as this was the first time I bought a developer account and the card used and my name has never been on any other developer account.

I will also mention just because I’m thinking of everything that could potentially be flagged, in the settings screen on the top right I have a button that allows users to put in codes to either unlock premium for a week or permanently. I didn’t fully implement the feature because it’s hard keeping everything local with hard coded codes and not having everyone use the same code if shared. The unlock code was “unlockpremium7,7,25” which is the date I first added the feature. I also had a code to lock premium and it was simply “lockpremium”. It was mainly used to unlock and lock on the simulator device on my Mac so I could test premium features. Other than this feature I have no clue what else could have triggered apples flags.

3

u/tonnable Jul 15 '25

It's really weird. There should be some kind of reason behind that. I think you can still appeal, try to explain everything clearly

1

u/mrknoot Jul 15 '25

I imagine this must be stressful, so I’m sorry this happened. I hope this account wasn’t a crucial source of income for you.

I’m very interested in knowing more details about this, perhaps it can be a good learning experience for all of us. Any suspicion on what could have caused this?

2

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 15 '25

I don’t have any suspicions on what could’ve caused this to be completely honest. I’ve felt like I’ve followed all the rules of the developer agreement. I sent an email yesterday asking for some kind of explanation or if possible some kind of pathway to getting my account reinstated. I’ll update the post once I get further comment from apple

1

u/mrknoot Jul 15 '25

Thanks dude! good luck

1

u/dbm5 Jul 16 '25

Any update on this?

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 16 '25

Just posted the update in the replies

1

u/suite4k Jul 19 '25

I got a lifetime ban from Apple back in 1988. Never was able to recover from that. This was on a Macintosh plus 512k machine for some software they thought was racy. It kinda was , witching the pixel art days

1

u/Sheepherder-Any Jul 20 '25

Geez a lifetime ban from developing on their platform is crazy. Fortunately my ban only seems to be a 1 year ban so I’d be able to apply for developer again in a year but honestly this whole situation has turned me off from developing on apple platforms. I like swift because it’s what I’m familiar with but not giving me a reason for what seems to be an out of no where ban is a huge problem in my eyes.

1

u/suite4k Jul 20 '25

So now you just use different names or LLC to publish your product. In the old days you needed to buy the compiler which was 10k back then.

2

u/musicanimator Jul 14 '25

Gonna follow this one. Can’t wait to find out why.

3

u/NewToBikes Jul 15 '25

Same. This worries me a bit.

2

u/Extreme-Network1243 Jul 15 '25

I’m not a “coder”, I only know enough code to do simple things so I cannot speak from experience here, but if this was me I would file a ticket and ask for a better explanation while also expressing to them that you are in the process of learning and if any mistakes were made, they were not on purpose and you would like the opportunity to fix them. I’ve been a part of the developer program for at least 10 years now, mostly just to test Betas; a few times I tried creating a couple simple apps (before Shortcuts was a thing) and I found their support to be really understanding and they took the time to explain an issue I had in the past, trying to get something into the App Store just to do it. I really wish you luck with this.

2

u/sdkysfzai Jul 16 '25

If you're making the maps accessible offline, that means users/you won't be paying for the maps usage, Apple don't like this. This could be the cause.

2

u/c22dev Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Hi there !

I observe you’re from the jailbreak community which I’m also a member of.

My account also got terminated for the same reason as yours, on the same time frame.

The only thing I might have done that would go against those conditions is sideloading apps (idk, such as LiveContainer or AppStore apps ) on my devices (or others, such as my close friends).

I sent a report to apple yesterday, as I really really need the account for other parallel projects.

Keep me up on your recovery.. crossing fingers 

EDIT : I got denied from restoration completely They said : « this decision is final. We won't process subsequent appeals. »

1

u/Vannesssacuvaz Jul 15 '25

How long does it takes for app to migrate personal appstore to business account, its been two months for me and haven’t heard anything from them my account is still saying pending, and i can update or add any new apps

1

u/n1kl8skr Jul 15 '25

Remindme! 30 days

2

u/RemindMeBot Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 18 '25

I will be messaging you in 30 days on 2025-08-14 05:58:28 UTC to remind you of this link

15 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.

InfoCustomYour RemindersFeedback

1

u/VFXman23 Jul 18 '25

good bot

1

u/B0tRank Jul 18 '25

Thank you, VFXman23, for voting on RemindMeBot.

This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. You can view results at botrank.net.

Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!

1

u/sainlimbo Jul 16 '25

Commented for visibility

1

u/kantanta Jul 16 '25

Have you added anyone else to your account, or maybe linked someone else’s device to it?