Apple banned me because a fake Sean Byrne is on a U.S. government list
The other Sean Byrne doesn't exist
Sean Byrne, an Irish security professional, was denied access to App Store Connect after Apple matched him against a U.S. Entity List entry for a 'Sean Byrne' at an address in Sligo. That entry stems from a 2009 case against Mac Aviation, which had invented the name as an alias. Byrne has faced similar false positives at Nasdaq, SpaceX, and DHL, but Apple refused to resolve it. He argues that such screening, now being used in hiring, will flag him forever because the listing lacks identifiers like a date of birth.
A screening system that does its job perfectly will still flag me, forever, on the only two facts the record contains: a common Irish name and a country.
- stevoski
I once met an Irish person who was detained at Beirut Airport when (trying to) leave the country, and who then disappeared into the Lebanese prison system. Really, he just disappeared.
Luckily he was allowed to make a call just after being detained, to his friend who worked for the British Council in Beirut. The friend was tirelessly in searching for him and seeking his release. It wasn’t easy.
(I met him just after his release, while he was building the courage to try again to leave the country.)
Why was he detained? Because his common Irish first name and common Irish surname matched someone on an Interpol list.
- shelled
This scares me! Denial of service (in some cases you may not even have an alternative), in some cases custody, et cetera and that too based on a false positive or a flimsy match. And no one doubles checks it, no one bothers to make sure, and they are allowed to do that! All this is actual legal and no one pays for it once it's found out, and even if you have suffered. None.
And heaven's forbid if your actual ID and references (i.e you) have ended up in such places (or such list/s) by mistake or malice.
- Aozora7
This is one of the obvious consequences of not having a national identity number assigned to everyone at birth, which exist in most developed countries, except for anglosphere, for some reason.
- Cider9986
The App Store as the only way to install apps is the worst part about iOS and why I'll never use it again.
I'm always helping friends with piracy and I have to tell them they can't conveniently use a native app because it isn't listed on the App Store.
And then there's the removal of ICE apps.
It's too much control. On iOS, if the government banned Signal, Apple could enforce it. On GrapheneOS, you can use whatever app from anywhere no matter what.
- frereubu
This has been going on for a long time. In the early 2000s I knew someone with the relatively common name Ian Smith who was routinely held up in airports because someone else with that name was on a watch list. I think in the end he managed to get some kind of stamp in his passport that officially said "not that Ian Smith", and it seems mad this isn't easier to resolve these days.
- snickerer
Oh, the classic Tuttle <-> Buttle name confusion!
I always remember the movie Brazil when I have to interact with a stupid cybernetic apparatus like every big company, where simple programs are the brain and low-paid humans are the actuators.
- dcminter
I got temporarily banned from the Sun Java Forums years and years ago because of something like this. I tried creating a few test accounts and it seemed to be the first name, not even the full name, that was the "match" ! I assume someone on the list had an alias of just "Dave" or "David" and whoever implemented the filter had just done the easiest thing possible.
Not really a life-altering inconvenience, and the other forum members got sufficiently uppity that they re-reviewed it and let me back in, but it was a good lesson in how big orgs have no innate common sense.
- martinclayton
One option might be for the real Sean Byrne to move to the address in Sligo of the fictitious one, then ask to be removed from the Entity List on the grounds that he is a real person. I think that wouldn't work, and could be life-changing in a bad way, but it's an idea.