My Apple ID was locked by Apple Oct 3rd. I got an automated email stating that I will receive further instructions for account recovery Oct 10th, a week of pain. There is zero human escalation path, no phone number to call, the iforget link leads to same message as email and no further escalation.

Because my Apple ID is frozen, the App Store is completely bricked. I can’t update any apps. Living in Japan, almost all of my critical banking and payment apps (like Rakuten Pay) enforce hard version checks for security. The app refuses to launch, needing update. A locked Apple ID effectively cut off my access to my money and daily transactions.

My temporary workaround was digging out an old Android phone to use as a backup for my payment apps (of course these apps are only allowed on one device so now I need to carry two phones). But it made me realize how scary my setup was. If Apple decides to lock account, entire day-to-day life stops, and no one to talk to about it. Going forward I am definitely not storing any important government ID like driver license, payments cards, my number card (similar to SSN in US) on Apple devices.

How are you guys decoupling your digital lives from a single OS ecosystem? What does your personal "cold standby" look like to handle this risk?

My personal computing infrastructure was all in Apple ecosystem. But this incident made me realize, Apple is SPOF, I need to diversify away from Apple and be also part of non-Apple environment.