Widespread Reports of Apple ID Accounts Being Inexplicably Locked

I’m one of those unfortunate folks with 2 Apple IDs (one from iTools perhaps? System 9?), and only the mac.com Apple ID was affected. Does seem ok now after I went through the multiple logins with a new password.

Parenthetically, I was a bit paranoid last night about the password reset because about an hour before, I had received a “pig butcher” chatty text message,

complete with a photo of a young Chinese girl, and a few hours before that had purchased lunch via an online ordering site at a new-to-me Asian restaurant using my mobile number as my account.

I assumed all 3 were related, but perhaps only the “pig butcher” and restaurant were related. Or perhaps just coincidence and coincidence and coincidence?
¯_(ツ)_/¯

It happened to me last night around 6:00. Suddenly my TV, iPhone, iPad, and Watch all wanted me to re-enter my Apple ID password. Probably my Mac too, but I wasn’t looking at that at the time. After a couple rounds of correctly entering passwords and six-digit codes, I was told I had to reset my password. It worked, but it’s a little nerve-wracking wondering if there’s some weird phishing going on or if I’m going to get locked out of my account.

I’ve been plagued with frequent “your iCloud id has been locked for security reasons”. I ran into problems two weeks ago where I couldn’t unlock it (iForgot Apple ID reset not working?) – I suspect that was a system problem.

So, I wasn’t surprised when yesterday evening (5 PM CDT) I had to unlock it again.

What was surprising was what happened later in the evening, when I was hit with the problem described in the article. All my devices wanted me to sign back into iCloud, but I couldn’t, because the account was locked. But, when I got past the identity confirmation tests, it wanted me to change my Applid ID password.

That’s never happened before. I don’t like changing it, because doing so removes all your generated app passwords, so you have to recreate them.

I just finished repairing everything, on all my devices. Had to sign in again to Messages and FaceTime. Is there anything else that requires a separate sign-in?

This is getting annoying. I appreciate Apple’s security in the face of what’s likely a continuous onslaught of Apple ID guessing attempts, but I sure wish there was a way they could do that without so much inconvenience. I don’t have this problem with any other id.

One more thing… I bet that Apple ID getting locked is more common than people realize. For more purposes, it doesn’t affect you – you can continue to use iCloud services using some kind of cached credential. But I see it within a week, because iMazing app downloads and checking issue status on the Apple Feedback Assistant both require an unlocked Apple ID.

I’ve only got one Apple ID and it’s on a custom domain. Still got locked out for no reason. Had to make a new password.

Yeah I get this too. Sometimes it’s using “Sign In with Apple” on a website I’ve used before and it says my account has been locked.

However last night was different in that I got a pop up on my Mac telling me my Apple ID was locked. Haven’t seen that before.

I’d assume coincidence. I get several probably-phishing texts every day. Usually with messages like “Hi, Biran, how’s your Mom?”. Always from a different phone number (so blocking numbers doesn’t help). Always an innocuous sounding message. And for some reason, always calling me “Brian” (I wonder if some scammer database has that associated with my phone number). I always delete them and report them to Apple as junk, but they never stop coming.

I assume that if I would respond to one, I’d end up talking with a chatbot programmed to exfiltrate data that could be used for identity theft.

I don’t think server glitches like this are new either, although locking Apple IDs is new (at least to me).

When I was running Catalina and Big Sur, I would occasionally get a flood of authentication problems from all of the Mac’s system services, each one asking for my keychain password. Canceling the request or providing the password would do nothing. I’d then reboot and all would be back to normal.

I suspect there was a memory leak somewhere in the system, because it would only happen if the system was up and running (and logged in) for a long time (over a month). And after upgrading to Ventura (and then the forced-upgrade to Sonoma), the problem has not (yet) recurred.

I’d also find (again, on that Big Sur system) that the system would seem to lose my Google login credentials. I’d get a popup telling me that I need to re-authenticate that account, almost always at the same time as I’m shutting-down or restarting the computer. Then I’d have to re-login to Google (including 2FA, and then receiving a flood of “there was a new login on…” messages sent to my GMail account and all of my Google account’s alternate e-mail addresses) in order for various Mac services (calendar, contacts, etc.) to regain access.

But this (so far) also stopped after the upgrade to Ventura and Sonoma.

Happened to me last night. Just returned from an overnight trip and bam…there it was about 10PM.
I was able to reset my password, but then had to re-log all devices, and re-set Application specific passwords.
A real PIA!

No idea why?

Same thing happened to me yesterday with two different Apple IDs, wiping out all app-generated passwords.

Apple services have become more trouble than they are worth to me.

My wife and I are good so far. I use a non-Apple domain Apple ID (i.e., it’s not an iCloud, mobile me, or dotMac account); she uses a .me account, and is away and traveling for the weekend. Thanks to reports here, and the supporting articles from Michael Tsai and 9to5mac, I was able to warn her it might happen.

What was different was being asked to sign in with my password in the middle of an Apple TV+ movie. I have never had that happen before.

The thing that was apparent was that how the Apple ID is the bottleneck for everything Apple. If I want to use an app on my iPhone or iPad, that app has been purchased with my ID and that needs to be verified first. Without that sign in, your device can make phone calls, but not perform as a computer that I can see.

Happened to me last evening, too. Compounding the problem was that after resetting all my devices, the AppleID website wouldn’t let me generate an app specific password (ASP). It kept telling me that my account was still locked. This, despite being logged back on to all my devices and into the AppleID website using my new password! After about an hour with Apple support chat and then escalated to a higher tech via phone, they had me clear my Safari history and sign back in through the iforgot.apple.com website. That eventually allowed Apple’s system to unlock the account and let me generate an ASP without having to resort to another account password reset. Phew…

I experienced this yesterday afternoon. I have a .mac account. Normal steps to verify and unlock failed to work. I am running Ventura on a MacPro 7.1 (2019) desktop. I literally spent hours trying to find a workaround given the number of devices I have and how my Apple ID is being utilized. The last thing I wanted to do is reset my password due to the impact it has on other devices and tools I use.

I called Mac support and spoke to a senior advisor. While empathic, the effort was totally useless and unhelpful as workaround could be offered, claiming their was none. He also failed to acknowledge this was a worldwide issue affecting users all over and to take and made no attempt to have Apple take responsibility for the issue. Of course I did not know it was an worldwide Apple issue until I read this article.

Here is what I know about it so far:
• Normal steps to verify your Apple ID to avoid resetting your password will not work.
• To the best of my knowledge there is no workaround. You force to reset your password to a different on that you have not used in the last year.
• You cannot reset the one you were using for one year.
• Apple supposedly cannot or will not delete any current or previously existing passwords.
• To the best of my knowledge this issue or any issue can no longer be escalated above an Apple senior advisor level.
• Apple so far to the best of my knowledge has not made any announcement about this issue to its customers. For all I know Apple could have experienced so kind of security issue or breach and decided to have all, or a select group of users, be forced to reset their password without informing its users about this, thus dumping a possible Apple security issue into the hands of its users to fix it.

This issue is most surely causing grief, frustration, lost time and productivity to all who experience it. It does not seem to be related directly to macOS but to the Apple on-line support system managed by Apple via its security and server infrastructure. Given it seems to be an Apple issue and not a user issue, in my opinion Apple needs to be held accountable for this issue, financially for the lost time and frustration of its Mac users or offer some form of compensation for the issue for the lost time interruptions for users that have to fix it and lost productivity. While I lack the necessary knowledge and resources to initiate this, hopefully someone reading this might be able to.

Additionally Apple needs to proved tools to users and through Apple Support to allow users to verify their ID without resetting their password for legitimate cases where the standard protocols do not work such as what has happened with this issue. Currently to the best of my knowledge that does not currently exist. Users and customers should not be held accountable for Apples mistakes. It is past time for Apple to stop acting like ‘Big Brother’ and once again adapt a paradigm of being customer and user centric.

I am of the opinion that Apple Senior Support Agents or a special subgroup should have the tools that after taking steps to validate the requestor be able to manage password issues in a way that does not require the requestor to reset their password, especially when they are not responsible for the issue. Users should be responsible for their password protection not Apple, other to secure their infrastructure from improper access to protect users from hackers and malware. If a user fails to protect their password or decides to use a compromised password that should be the users choice and responsibility and if so the user should bear the responsibility for doing so and the consequences for not doing so instead of Apple acting as ‘Big Brother’. That said if Apple wishes to provide tools and protocols to assist users to manage and protect their passwords I am fine with that, but it should be a user decision to use them, not Apple.

It is past time to hold Apple responsible for it overbearing behavior especially at times when such behavior presents a disruption to their customers and users lives.

Update: I just found out this evening that when resetting the Apple ID password it also without notice, deletes all the App specific passwords and all of those have to be reentered. By deleting them without warning or notice there is no record of what App specific passwords were set. So unless a user was aware that this can happen so they can take a snapshot of what they are, it becomes a user exercise to figure out what App Specific passwords were utilized. This can be a major time consuming issue if the user has a lot of Apps, especially if an App Specific password was created years ago for a rarely used App. Since creating an App Specific App is a multistep time consuming process, if a user launches an App that is vitally needed at a critical time this can ruin someone’s day. If it happens while driving and using CarPlay the consequence could be tragic due to driver distraction

Another pain is that we are trying to enter the new password for our watches, but when we paste the password into the pop up “keyboard” (actually only a text field) and press Done, it does not pass the text to the watch. Any other way of doing this?

I got an account locked error a couple of weeks ago when I tried to log into Apple TV+ on my Amazon FireTV. Didn’t think too much about it since I had other ways to watch content. Then last night, I kept getting prompts on iPhone and iPad to re enter my password. Had to to through the routine of resetting my password which didn’t go smoothly - I have Yubikeys on my account. Was successful finally but was a pain. Didn’t happen with my wife. I’m away from home right now and do have enhanced security turned on.

Has not happened to me. Yet. Hopefully not in the future. I don’t have an iPhone, Just a Mac Mini, and a iPad, and a single Apple login.

Another is iPhone “Call on Other Devices” (integration between the iPhone and my iMac) was off, and it wouldn’t let me turn it on. It gave an error that FaceTime had to be signed into the same account as iCloud. But it was. The fix was to reboot the phone.

I, too, experienced this exact experience yesterday evening around 6:30 or so. It first popped up while watching a baseball game on my Apple TV. It quickly started also showing up on each of my other devices—second Apple TV, iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone. It required about an hour of my time, and left me somewhat frustrated. Prior to today’s Tidbits article I was unaware that this was a widespread occurrence. I’m now considering independently initiating my own resetting of my Apple ID password through iCloud just to be safe. Thanks for this heads up, Adam.

Happens all the time. Apple should know passwords get simpler every time they do it, making it less safe for everyone.

Happened to me too around 5PM Arizona time 4/26.

Yep, same here at 8:15 pm EDT just night while watching AppleTV+ and doing nothing else, not even checking my phone.
I started to step through the hoops but remembered reading about the scam where messages pop up that wear you down until you click on the wrong thing and they can then get in. I knew this was different but thought it might be a variation so called Apple support.
After a 20 wait on hold, I spoke with a fairly clueless rep who was in over his head and I ended up insisting I talk with an Apple Engineer.
That was a major turning point and she was able to guide me through (except that she could never do a screen share, likely due to being logged out of iCloud).
An hour and 20 minutes later and it got sorted but must reset everywhere.
Exclusively use a .Mac account as my Apple ID.

Here is my post in the earlier thread:
So what is to stop a malicious person guessing, or discovering, an AppleID email and attempting to log into iCloud with it numerous times so that a lock-out by Apple is triggered? Not to break into an account - just to be a nuisance…

------- update ----
Unfortunately login systems that were developed many years ago seem to assume that there are not malicious people out there who delight in disrupting people’s lives. Assuming this is the cause of so many instances of password resets (and not technical issue at Apple) then the only protection may be that you are one of billions of emails out there for these creeps to try.

John Gruber reported that the Apple developer system status dashboard on Friday night showed that maintenance was happening for “accounts” though Apple’s normal status dashboard page showed no issues that night. My suspicion that this was something Apple triggered internally Friday night during this maintenance rather than people trying to trigger these errors maliciously. But it sure would be nice of Apple to explain exactly what happened, or what they think happened. I know it’s a weekend, but still…

Not having experienced either, I wonder what distinguishes this as Apple but this one as not Apple: Beware of Attacks Using Password Reset Request Notifications - TidBITS

I wonder why not me (or any others in our household), and why so many others.

I have an iPhone 12 mini at 17.4.1, iPad 12.9 (rev1) at 16.7.7, Mac Studio at 12.7.4. I don’t use iCloud for anything.

The same thing happened to me mid-evening last Friday. A message popped up on my watch telling me to log in. All my attempts to follow the instructions and reset resulted in a hang until I rebooted everything.
This morning, I am trying to track down and redo all my application passwords.
The whole experience created a level of stress that I didn’t need. Especially given all the password-reset brute-force scams out there.

This happened to a few customers last week but their accounts were really locked as they weren’t even allowed to change their passwords (an error ‘unsupported Apple ID’ appears when using the procedure through ‘Apple Support’ app on iOS).

We are still waiting answers from Apple…

I just had what looks like a variant: iCloud would not recognize the one-time password that I’ve been using with BusyCal for years.

yea, my iCloud got locked out of nowhere.
I thought it was fat thumbs. Guess not.

Glad to find out it’s not just me. I’ve been working with Apple senior support for three weeks with no success yet. I don’t think it’ll be coming. So far, fingers crossed, I’ve only had one Mac device create a lockout. My problem is on a Windows 10 pro machine in whatever browser I try to use. I could not get iCloud for Windows app to accept sign in either. There is a 404 not found error in a window when I hover over the icon in the taskbar but it doesn’t actually show on the screen when I tried to sign into iCloud for Windows app. Also, curiously I’ve noticed a pattern that after the failed attempts to login, I get a message on my iPhone to confirm login. It’s like there’s something out of sync. It’s like a timeout is occurring because I did not respond to confirm an attempted login but I never get until after the failure.

I also have 2 apple id’s. My old iTools/.Mac (Remember .Mac? and iDisk?) locked me out and my other (from a custom domain) did not. Of course the .Mac email is my primary though.

Ah, I’m very glad to see that I’m in good company as at the time that it was happening to me, I thought that someone had hacked (or attempted to) my account! I looked all over the internet for other reporting parties of the event but couldn’t find a single instance. I was locked out of everything for about 20 minutes, before I was ultimately able to enter a new password and create new app specific passwords.

I have several different Apple accounts but this only happened to my oldest which I’ve had since 2008 or something.

Glad to hear the password reset has worked for you. I have reset password more than 5 times (with lg outs from all the devices, which is a pain) and still cannot login to iCloud on a Windows 10 Pro machine.

This just happened to my wife. Her Apple Watch 6 was misbehaving so we decided to unpair it and restore from backup. Just as she started the restore, she got the locked out message along with a note that since she is in an unfamiliar location (our condo which we inhabit six days a month) she would have to wait an hour and then reset her password. 45 minutes to go.

[edit] Before the hour went by she was again asked to enter her password and trusted phone number. She did and her account was immediately unlocked with no need to wait and hour and no need to change the password and no mention of being in an unfamiliar location.

As for Apple Support; my recent experience as been dismal. My 15" M2 MBA was experience SMTP TLS authentication errors. I spoke with a dozen low lever support people and was referred to three different and successive senior support people. None of them seem to have a clue and each ended up ghosting me; refusing to respond to phone calls or email messages. I remain stunned by this behavior.

This is nothing new. It has been happening to me for years, usually at least one a month, and sometimes several times in one day or a couple of days.

I have two Apple IDs as many do, going back to the early days when there were separate services. I use one for iCloud and one for purchases, but it only happens the the iCloud one. (I have asked several times whether it was possible to merge the purchases into the iCloud account, but no! )

I had thought of ringing Apple, but never got around to it. Seems like I saved myself some time since Apple does not seem to be able to help.

My assumption was that someone had been trying to login to my account, but the failed password attempts had caused the account to be locked. Could it be that suddenly more Apple accounts are being attacked like this now?

I have always wondered about this. Seems like it would be a way for someone to really screw with you if they wanted to be malicious. In practice, I’ve never actually seen that happen that I know of. However, someone who has a similar ID to me might repeatedly try to log in with the wrong user ID, causing a forced password reset. I’m constantly getting emails meant for someone else with the same name as me, but a slightly different email address. Very annoying.

This happened to me just the other day. I’ve never seen a “Locked password” message before, so I wondered if someone had been hammering my account. I immediately checked iCloud system status but it was OK. So I had to change my password on all three devices that I use.

Has Apple said anything publicly about this incident? It’s a real black eye for them from where I sit. Four days later, I’m still picking up the pieces from having been logged out of everything connected to iCloud and my Apple ID.

I had something similar happen. Rather than risk divulging any information I rebooted the computer which solved THATN problem. It is worth a try on this one.

Add me to the list of victims. As an early adopter, I have a .mac account, which seems to be a key to all this. My wife used a gmail.com address for her account and had no issues. I have been able to get several Apple units, phone/watch/iPads/MAC OS machines but I still have a few days before all are unlocked. My biggest concern is with Apple and their consistent silence if there is an issue like this. I felt pure panic when this hit Friday evening. “Has my entire Apple account been compromised”? On Saturday, I called Apple. I was not able to open my MAC using my watch. I asked about the reported problem from the night before, sighted several MAC-focused news outlets’ reports, and was met with a “Have not heard about any of that.” I imagine she put me on hold to check with her supervisor and came back with the same comment: nothing wrong here. I expected much more from the company I was “siloed” with.

Do we think this lockout/forced change was only affecting users with an old account? My Apple ID dates from Apple iTools on 4/27/2000.

You’ll need to regenerate your App Specific passwords by logging into appleid.apple.com. When you reset your Apple ID password, it wipes out the App Specific passwords.

If you use an Apple Watch to unlock your Mac; it also tosses a token or something. I had to unpair and reset my Watch then restore from backup before I could enable the unlock feature in macOS.

Many, many years ago I had a financial institution that would lock your account after three consecutive failed log-in attempts. The reset process involved physically visiting a branch. When I tried to explain to their support how dangerous this was, they were condescending and rude to an astonishing degree. So I guessed the CEO’s likely log-in name and wrote a little script.

They fixed their system a few days later.

whatever works!

I’m still dealing with some weirdness from this whole fiasco five days later. As was mentioned by another poster, application passwords are deleted with an Apple ID password change.

I use Fantastical which signs into my Apple ID to access my calendars. I created a new application password for Fantastical on my Mac a couple of days after everything went down. At some point yesterday the version of Fantastical on my iPhone started prompting me for a new password too.

When I logged into appleid.apple.com to create another application password, I got caught in a login loop every time I tried to generate the application password. It took me several tries to complete the process.

Yes. Frickin’ annoying! Particularly the bit where they just silently slaughter your app-specific passwords, requiring you to guess where you might have put them. (Pro tip: mostly SMTP, in my case, and largely obsoleted by using a SMTP relay on my local network, so you might do that in future if you have a similar setup.) I also love that you can get caught out again if you boot up an affected device after going through the enforced reset, so you really need to know where all your devices stand. I was very fortunate to be within physical reach of all of them at the time, but I still got an unpleasant surprise when I booted up my MBP a day or so later. Just charming really. Also for some reason creating a new app password absolutely required me to log in using a password (passkey not allowed), and my AirPods pairing keys and Apple Watch unlock got thrown away (quick, but irritating fixes, both). And this all kicked off for me just as I was drifting off to sleep. Just all very horrible honestly and I hope (against hope) that Apple gives us some explanation. Because frankly we deserve one. Nearly had a heart attack when I got the account locked message.

The best laugh I have had this week!

Wondering whether Mr Cook was asked about this/raised it himself during the recent revenue call?

I’m guessing not as I still haven’t seen any reporting about Apple even just acknowledging this problem exist(s).

No. Jason Snell at six colors posts a transcript of the call; here is the one from this week: This is Tim: Complete transcript of Apple’s Q2 2024 analyst call – Six Colors

Here’s a thing I just discovered. I had the same thing happen, and after going through the horrible experience to recover (dialogs on top of dialogs, being told on my iMac I couldn’t do anything there and to use one of my other devices, one of which was the iMac I was using, being told to fix things I had to log in to my Apple ID, which of course I couldn’t, etc), it turns out I also have to reverify the payment methods for my Apple ID. Hopefully I caught it before it renews my AppleCare+ today.

I don’t remember being told about this, but my iPhone was showing dialogs on top of dialogs and the whole thing was so confusing I could have missed it, but worth looking into if you had the problem.

Re: " have two Apple IDs as many do, going back to the early days when there were separate services. I use one for iCloud and one for purchases …"

FYI about doing this on any device (i.e., logged into an iCloud Apple ID for using iCloud Drive, iCloud authentication, etc., etc. and a different Apple ID for Media, Purchases, Subscriptions, etc.) is that the latter “hides” Subscriptions (maybe Purchases as well?) made by the other Apple ID.

I just found out about this when I discovered I was still being charged (annually) for AppleCare+ (renewing until cancelled) for my 2018 Intel MacBook Pro – which I still have, but just as a last-resport “cold backup” for my M2 Mac Mini. I couldn’t “see” the AppleCare+ subscription on any of my devices – they all use two Apple IDs.

The fix was to temporarily log out of the second Apple ID (on any of my devices), then go to Subscriptions in Settings. Where I could see and cancel that hidden hidden Subscription. Ah, be sure to log back into that second Apple ID for purchases in order to keep track of its subscriptions.

[And, yes, it’s awkward even getting ahold of Apple Support nowadays. Over 72 hours, I waited in vai, twice promised callbacks from “another specialized group”… until the third time I called Apple Support and (gently but persistently) insisted on a conference call instead of a callback.]

Me too. I have:
• been added to a church mailing list,
• had a script for a TV show sent to me,
• been set down as the address of an employee of a company and was getting his pay slips, tax statements, etc
• been set up as the e-mail address of a bank customer, asked to verify the e-mail, then without me replying, sent his bank statements to the unverified address! I could have used this to access his bank accounts. When I contacted the bank (Wells Fargo), they were not interested.

Moral: Do not use just your name as an e-mail address. Too easy for mistakes from other people with similar names, or for spammers to make up addresses.

Re: “Moral: Do not use just your name as an e-mail address. Too easy for mistakes from other people with similar names, or for spammers to make up addresses.”

Yet Another associated problem: spammers can send you email from what looks like your account – to try to convince you that you’ve been hacked.

In the screenshot (from Mail on my Mac), I’ve redacted the name (same under all the greyed-out places. Yes, the From address has been faked.

C91A778B-735D-4767-BC0C-DC6A57122151_1_201_a1488×1754 201 KB

Hey, I just got that message, from “me” to me.

If I understood the headers correctly, it originated in the Seychelles.

Or at least the (insecure or hacked) mail server where they injected the message is in the Seychelles. The attackers themselves could be anywhere in the world, of course.

I appreciate the nuance, and it’s obvious once you state it. Thank you.

It reminds me of the joke about three professionals on train that enters Scotland, where they see some black sheep.

One person, whose profession I have forgotten, says, “In Scotland, the sheep are black.”

A second person, whose profession I have forgotten, says, “No, in Scotland, some of the sheep are black.”

The mathematician (see, I remembered one profession) says, “No, in Scotland, there exists at least one group of sheep whose members are black on at least one side.”

Happened Again! It’s 10 days later and out of the clear blue, just like on 26 April 24 at 8:15 p.m. ET, I just got locked out of everything, called Apple support, demanded to speak with an Apple Engineer, was finally connected to some kind of senior person who said they can’t refer anyone to engineers (which I know is for sure not true), and then me get out of the reset, reset, reset loop, where I couldn’t even create a new password, even if I wanted to.

For future folks reading this, what happened this time was…
This person had me logout of my iCloud account, create a new password (yet again), and then suggested two things:

1. delete old VPN configurations that I no longer use (hmmmm), and
2. turn off Stolen Device Protection (SDP)

The SDP does seem very problematic. I have had mine set to require the security delay only when I’m away from familiar locations, but that just doesn’t work and the Apple senior somebody I just spoke with confirmed that SDP doesn’t know or honor familiar locations. So, maybe an article on the efficacy of this feature might be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I’m leaving for Europe for a month and will not have this safety feature turned on because in case this is what’s causing the drop everything and reset your password right now insanity occurs again.

So, for now, I’m back in to my computers with yet another new password, waiting for the 1 hour to pass to turn off SDP, even though I’m sitting at home where I’ve been for the past 10 years, and using my time to make new app-specific passwords…again.

A no doubt way too late suggestion for most. Do not use your real name for an apple id or for emails unless absolutely required to do so. Doing so makes one a ’ soft target ’ for most all scams etc

I have mostly done this for years since I found out one of my real name emails was hacked/exposed (pwned) in drop box over a decade ago.
So I use made up names which make it nearly impossible to find anything about me
example ( not real just made up/ ) Apple id = peachswim35 email = grateturn21@ xyz…

RE banklockout-- happened to me cuz a bank screwup- because they assumed ( wrongly ) I used text on an iphone and did not reply since I use only a simple landline ( voip ) luddite style pushbutton phone- they eventually- a week later sent me a letter about not replying - but no other in fo. It was a few weeks before I found out account was locked. had a hard chat in person with local bank officer and made sure that never happened again- and after that bank gave options to notices via voice phone or text. Thats one small step for a luddite- one short leap for internet kind

This whole fiasco demonstrates a few failure points of Apple.

Firstly the Apple ID account and log on business is a total mess. With Apple claiming to be ‘smart’ in so many things, Apple cannot seem to get a customer relationship and management installation running that is standard practice for so many government organisations and enterprises. Just the rigmarole of logging in if you have more than one user account on an Apple device is ever frustrating and time wasting.

Secondly there’s the issue of having more than one Apple ID issued by Apple. I wasted time when I had two Apple ID (the mistake of being an early adopter) and apparently could not delete one. This was only resolved when I used the Australian government consumer organisation to heavy Apple Australia, which caused Apple Australia to remove one of my Apple ID very quickly - not so hard after all.

Thirdly, the extreme difficulty of getting Apple to recognise that there is a problem/bug/error/stupidity in a software release, especially macOS. It’s difficult even finding someone in Apple to contact let alone someone take responsibility to push the issue up to senior levels.

Fourthly, there is the overwhelming reluctance of Apple to admit that some update has gone wrong and worse still not to advise its customers that something has gone wrong. Added to this is Apple’s inability to promote a solution so we do not waste time trying to explore possible solutions and also causing us to believe that the problem is user caused. Apple has its customers’ email addresses and what Apple devices they own and so sending an email alerting of a current issue and providing solutions, or even ‘a don’t worry we are fixing the problem’ message. Maybe Apple’s nascent foray into AI might get an AI mailer to send out tailored alerts.

Lastly, those geniuses in the Apple shops are not so great nor so informed (see previous comment). They can’t seem to comprehend that a mac, which was working absolutely fine before the system upgrade, but not with the upgrade, has an upgrade issue and not a user issue. Always it is their default response to say it is a user issue. Surely they should be trained out of this practice.

This whole business shows how valuable TidBits is to the Apple user community in alerting such issues and using the talent to advise solutions. Given I have had to help a few relatives and friends who did suffer this latest farce by Apple, I could not have given any help without TidBits. I’m pleased to be a subscriber.

As a postscript, I was getting annoyed with the Europeans causing headaches for Apple and was sympathetic to Apple. But I’m not so sympathetic after these latest failures of Apple. I would like some government consumer organisation take on Apple and cause it to do better in customer support by issuing penalties until Apple passes muster. There’s no useful organisation in the US that can do this and so it might have to be the Europeans to take on Apple (again).

Same messsge to me last week! Since some of the claims were bogus about capturing video I knew it was phishing