How to . . . set up a US Apple ID

There are many reasons why you would set up a US Apple ID. The most pressing one though has been to get early access to Pokémon Go.

At one stage, you needed a US-based payment method - a credit card billed to a US address, for example - to set up an account. But now you can do it without entering a payment method at all, provided you are just downloading free apps.

Be warned though: this breaks Apple’s terms of service. You know, that long document that no one ever bothers reading when they sign up to use a service? It’s right in there. The relevant bit: “The Stores are available to you only in the United States. You agree not to use or attempt to use the Stores from outside this location. iTunes may use technologies to verify your compliance.”

So proceed at your your own risk. .

To get started:

Go to appleid.apple.com on your computer. Select Create Your Apple ID

Put in the email address you want to use, password and fill out your security questions. Make sure you select United States as your location.

Grab your verification code from the email Apple sends to your account.

Once you put that in, your account is created.

Sign into the new account on your phone, and when prompted for payment method, click “none”.

You’ll need a US address and zip code to put into the billing address, preferably a genuine one. Once the account accepts the information, you are now free to sign in to the App Store and download your apps.

There are some drawbacks to this of course. The first is that you’ll need to sign back in every time an update is issued until the app is available in your local store. Secondly, it’s free apps only, unless you have a genuine US payment method.

And of course biggest of all is, as already mentioned, that it breaks the terms of service that you agree to when you first sign in to the App Store using the account.