From an Uber driver to a solo app founder, and losing it all overnight

This is brutal. If this was genuinely a misunderstanding around demo rides for review, then going straight to a permanent ban without a warning or a conversation is absurd. One mistake shouldn't be enough to erase years of work overnight.

@apple team, do you think anything can be done now? Can i never ever publish those apps now?

Does this termination last forever? i cant publish my apps ever again?

I would be interested to hear Apple's explanation.

im literally checking everyday hoping they ll send me a mail. the funny thing is, i shared few unrelated questions on appe support and they are registering tickets, they are not reverting back at all, thats absurd. things like, question : 1, when can i reapply? question 2 : is this a lifetime ban. no , no replies from Apple.

Thank you for contacting us. We’ve received your support request and will get back to you as soon as possible. Your case ID is 102940752227. Best regards,

Apple Developer Program Support woww

@akhil_Dev45 Don't give up. Fight for your rights.

I thought i ll keep you guys updated, atleast writing here gives me a bit of relief, finally apple decided to respond to me.

saying this : Hello,

We received your message sent to our Executive team on June 10, 2026.

We thoroughly reviewed your file and found that your Apple Developer Program membership was used for dishonest and fraudulent activity in violation of Section 3.2(f) of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement. We reviewed your file again and confirm the earlier findings.

We consider this matter closed.

Regards, Apple Developer Relations Team

ITS SAME OLD STORY AGIAN, NO DETAILS, NO INSTRUCTIONS BACK, so wrote them this back.

Dear Apple Developer Relations Team,

Thank you for taking the time to review my case again and for responding.

I understand that you have decided to close this matter, and I respect that this is your decision. However, I would like to make one final request.

I am a first-time, independent developer who built my application while learning mobile development from scratch. I do not work for a software company, nor do I have a team of experienced developers guiding me. At no point did I intentionally attempt to deceive Apple or misuse the Apple Developer Program.

My greatest concern is that I still do not understand what specific actions or implementation led Apple to conclude that my account was involved in dishonest or fraudulent activity.

Without understanding the specific concern, I have no way of ensuring that I fully comply with Apple's expectations in the future. Even if I were to spend months or years learning and eventually apply again, I would still be uncertain whether I had unknowingly repeated the same mistake.

I am not asking Apple to reverse its decision in this email.

I am simply asking whether you could provide even a general explanation of the area that caused concern, or point me toward the specific guideline, practice, or implementation that resulted in this finding. I fully understand that you may not be able to disclose details of your internal review process, but any guidance would help me become a better developer and ensure I never repeat whatever issue led to this outcome.

For context, my ride-hailing service is a genuine business. The Android versions of both passenger and driver applications are publicly available, I operate a public website, and my goal has always been to build a legitimate transportation platform—not to mislead Apple or its users.

If I made mistakes during development, they were the result of inexperience rather than intent. As someone who is still learning, I would be sincerely grateful for any guidance that would help me understand where I went wrong.

Thank you again for your time and consideration.

Android rider app : link Android Driver app : link My business website : link(since i lost IOS overnight, my users are complalnaing that there is no IOS app), its too hard to live without it. I had to enable booking via my website for the timebeing since i dont have IOS. Please i would genuinely need your support here

Kind regards,

Akhil Sabu Apple Developer Account Holder (Was).

im not sharing links here, i dont want to get another ban from here as well.

If I I were Apple, Inc., I wouldn't tell you of the dishonest conduct you are accused of. If I did, you would find a way of circumventing the first dishonest act for which you were caught.

In the past 15 years, I have seen a lot of dishonest acts. One is a bogus last chance campaign where they claim that a discount will end soon and then repeat it again. Another is a review-sharing request. I see it every two or three days at Reddit.

Day 10 — I finally read the exact rule Apple used to terminate me

Two days ago Apple sent me their final answer. One line: my account "was used for dishonest and fraudulent activity in violation of Section 3.2(f)." Matter closed.

Then I realized something. In all these months, I had never actually read Section 3.2(f) myself. I had only seen it quoted at me in letters. So I downloaded the full developer agreement — 117 pages — and read it slowly. I'm sharing what I found, because I think most of us agree to this document without ever reading it. I did.

Here is the full text of Section 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);"

In plain words, it bans two things:

Doing anything on purpose to mess with Apple's store. Its own examples: writing fake reviews, copying another app's name to confuse people, or sitting on app names so others can't use them. A catch-all: any "unlawful, unfair, misleading, fraudulent, improper, or dishonest" business practice. Examples given: bait-and-switch pricing, lying to customers. That's the whole rule. Reading it, here is what genuinely surprised me:

There is no warning step. For this rule, termination is "effective immediately upon notice." The contract does have a 30-day fix-it period — but not for this category.

The word "appeal" appears exactly once in all 117 pages. And it's in the phrase apps "likely to appeal to children." The appeal we all file after termination is not a right we have. It's a favor Apple chooses to offer.

Apple's total liability to a developer is capped at fifty dollars. Whatever your apps were worth to you. Fifty dollars.

The numbers. From Apple's own transparency report: in 2024 they terminated 146,747 developer accounts. 225 got their account back. I wish I had known that before writing my appeals — I would have written them very differently.

And that's the one truly useful thing I found. In the rare cases where Apple reversed a termination, Apple's own reports describe what worked: developers who sent "detailed and satisfactory improvement plans" and cases where "technical investigations identified evidence to support reinstatement." Read that again. Not apologies. Not explanations of intent. A technical root-cause report plus a concrete fix plan — like an engineer writing up an incident.

My appeals were about my heart and my story. They probably should have been about my architecture.

If you are terminated and still inside your appeal window: write the incident report, not the plea. It's the only format Apple itself says has ever worked.

Day 12 — What I think my "fraud" actually was

Apple never told me what I did. So I spent months figuring it out myself, and I think I finally understand. Let me say it plainly.

My app behaved differently for the review account than for everyone else. That's it. That's the whole crime.

I seeded demo ride offers only for the reviewer's login, so they could experience a full trip. In my head, I was being helpful — showing them more, not less. But I've learned Apple has a name for exactly this mechanism: a "feature switch scheme" — an app that shows the review team something different from what users get. Scammers use that trick to hide things. I used it to show things. From the outside, the two are identical. Their systems don't measure intent. They measure difference.

And then bad luck made it worse. A second Apple login broke the first reviewer's session mid-review. From that moment my well-meaning demo turned into a horror show: fake-looking ride offers appearing every two minutes, that couldn't be rejected, in an app throwing errors. Put yourself in the reviewer's chair: a taxi app generating rides nobody asked for, that can't be declined, in an app that seems to fight back. If I saw that session with no context, I might have written "fraudulent activity" too.

The bitter part: my only defense was "the fake offers were just for you, to help you." And in their rulebook, that sentence isn't the defense. It's the definition of the violation.

Congratulations for the feedback and for the fair recognition of your error. It also shows that reviewer rejections are not baseless. In fact, if the app they test is not exactly the app user will get, that just negates the principles of review.

This being said, I wish you that someone at Apple reads your post and proposes a way to solve the issue.

Day 18 — Some good news, and something I wish I'd known months ago

Two things happened this week that I wanted to share here, because this thread has mostly been about loss and these aren't.

First: Google approved my Google Pay integration, and it's live in my Android app. A real rider paid with it on Saturday. After the last few months, watching that first wallet payment land was a genuinely emotional moment — it's the first thing in a while that felt like moving forward instead of holding on. Their team were thorough and clear throughout, and I'm grateful for it.

Second, and this is the part I want to leave here for anyone in the same position as me.

Since losing my developer account, I'd written off iPhone users completely. No account, no app, no App Store — so no iOS, full stop. I'd been treating roughly half my market as unreachable and quietly grieving that.

It turns out that was only half right. I can't ship an iOS app, and I've accepted that. But my web booking page works perfectly well on Safari — and Apple Pay on the web doesn't require an Apple developer account at all, because the payment processor is the merchant of record for the certificate. You register your domain with your processor and the button appears.

I registered my domains this morning. The front-end work to actually render the button is still ahead of me, so I'm not claiming it's done — but a door I'd assumed was locked turned out never to have been locked.

If you're in the middle of a termination and doing what I did — mentally writing off an entire platform's users — check what's actually still open before you accept the loss. An app store is one route to those people. It isn't the only one.

Still not eligible to reapply until the year is up. Still building. Android and the web are carrying the business, and the business is still here.

I'm sorry but your posts read like ChatGPT output. The same rhythm, the same "-isms", the same emoji use.

Perhaps it would come across better if you just use your own words. I can't imagine it would've helped if you used the same output in your communication with Apple.

I read your entire journey from beginning to end, and honestly, I’m really sorry for what happened to you. I truly hope things work out for you in the end.

This morning, I woke up to the exact same email from Apple saying that my developer account had been terminated and my three published apps had been removed from the App Store.

The difference is that my apps were just hobby projects. They were also available on Android, and I hadn’t even updated them for quite some time.

I honestly don’t believe any of them violated Apple’s policies, although maybe I’m missing something.

Unlike your case, there wasn’t anything like reviewer-specific behavior or demo functionality.

Losing my account hasn’t affected my life as deeply as it has affected yours, since I wasn’t running a business around these apps. Still, I know how frustrating and confusing it feels, so I just wanted to say I’m sorry you’re going through this.

I also had several other hobby apps that were nearly finished, and I was planning to publish them as well.

Now I’m wondering what happens if I create a new Apple Developer account and publish both my old and new apps there. Everywhere I look online, people say that any new account will eventually be terminated as well if it’s linked to a previously banned developer.

Have you found any reliable information about this, or do you know if there’s any legitimate way forward?