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Held Hostage By Apple

gixxerjeff

gixxerjeff

Optimistic Underdog
Joined
Nov 17, 2008
Location
Santa Rosa
Moto(s)
Some fast ones and some dirty ones.
Name
Derp
Modern problems, I know.....
My beloved girlfriend watched her cell phone fly off of the deck of our sailboat and splash hopelessly into the bay.
If it had been an android (like mine) this would've just been an expensive inconvenience....Apple made it a crippling, stress-filled nightmare.
If she had known her iCloud password, this would've been much easier. She did not have the password. There are good reasons for why that is, but not important here.
The loop she found herself in was accessing her iCloud account. She bought a brand new iPhone, but it was essentially useless until she activated her iCloud account to the new phone.
Normally, that's a piece of cake. The problem was, Apple would send a numeric code to her phone, followed by another code to her iCloud account that she could not access.
The "reset" procedure took 6 days. With no instruction provided, she waited the 6 days only to learn that she's missed the "opportunity" by mere minutes. That started the 6 day clock again.
Zero help from Apple support....mostly filled with a bunch of snark about "you shouldn't have lost your password"
Fucking 12 days to recover her data and make her phone work again. Unbelievable. If this was an android phone with a Gmail account, this could have been resolved within minutes, from anywhere in the world.
I hated Apple before......I'm irretrievable now.
Rant over....sorry. :jaded
 
Last edited:
Ridiculous.

The only Apple products I own are old iPods in each car.

I even use iTunes to update them.

My wife has all the Apple stuff including stock...the latter has, of course done very well in the 20 years or so she's held onto it.

Have you put your phone number on her Apple account as a "contact" to receive text messages should it happen again?
 
Ok now try the same thing when you want to update your elderly parents iPad to a new one and they don't remember the password because the deceased spouse had that knowledge and the surviving parent has memory issues

It's great apple is paranoid about security honestly. It's also a massive PITA sometimes
 
When I needed to recover my Apple account password, they just bluntly said "OK, it'll be two weeks".

And it was two weeks. No idea what that was about.

auntiebling said:
It's great apple is paranoid about security honestly. It's also a massive PITA sometimes
Click to expand...
Indeed. The unfortunate truth is that they're not paranoid, they're dealing the realities that the world is throwing at them.

And this is also the reason all my passwords are written down.

If the Mossad or CIA want them, they can come in and have them.

I just go back to the day my wife went to her ATM machine and completely, utterly blanked on her 4 digit code. It was simply gone. It has never returned. Never "oh now I remember". Gone.

So, locking my passwords behind a password is not a great idea.

I appreciate others have different threat models, and I certainly enjoy the convenience of the password manager on my Mac built into the browser.

But, I still write them down.

Man, do I hate passwords. But the alternatives are worse.
 
I am 74 and tech savvy. My wife still has problems with copy / paste. I keep a printed list of all passwords locked in a very safe place. Wife and my 43 year old daughter knows where it is. I like the 2FAs, Social Security and Medicare are both using the same 2FA. Login.gov
 
if you’re password challenged, use keychain. will save you the challenge of explaining to a tech company the fact that you don’t know the minimum of how to ensure your ability to interface with tech.
 
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Good info, thanks.
Not to get too far down this road, but it may answer some questions....
Her password was set up by a controlling boyfriend years ago. Now that he's gone, she's in the process of reclaiming her life.
That little detail didn't pop to the top of the long *to-do* list until it suddenly became a big detail.
She only uses one device so she never needed to login....until her only device took a swim in the bay.
Lessons learned, I know.
I'm still fuming about Apple's "Go get fucked, sucks to be you" approach to this nightmare.
 
I experienced the same thing, except I was locked out due to just clicking the "Oops I forgot my password, what's next?" button. So I rage quit Apple and now have an android tablet. I think the most galling thing is that no human ever engages the process. There should be a way to verify yourself without having to wait umpteen days. I could transfer my entire net worth between bank accounts in minutes online, but Apple can't (won't!) help if you lose a password.

I don't use a phone, so it gives me pleasure to respond to "just download the app" with "what's the other option for people who don't have a phone?" This is super disingenuous because I DO have a tablet which has all the function of a phone, but in general, I believe systems should not be established which require specific technology on the part of the customer. Sadly this ethic is likely doomed along with other principles of diversity, equity, or inclusion.
 
Was this recovery process online, by phone or in person at an Apple Store?
 
I like my androids, even if it means all my friends iPhone pictures look like they time traveled from the 90's when loaded on my phone. I do have 2FA enabled on my accounts, but even when a phone has died, the passcode comes to the number, which always ends up on the new phone.
 
I'm still struggling to get my wife's old apps from an old shared account to download to her device. I've been through the "wait 5 days for a code" twice. However, I was recently in the Los Gatos Apple Store trying unsuccessfully to gain access to my iPad - yerp, forgot the password - and when I explained the situation to the greeter, he suggested she bring in her devices and they will do what they can to help.

Back to my iPad; the Genius plugged it into one of their whiz-bang devices and declared it DOA. It's a 2019 1st gen iPad Pro and I couldn't bring myself to toss it. Long story short, I was able to resurrect it by jumping through all sorts of hoops, and it's now working fine. The moral of this story is twofold; that perhaps the Geniuses need a bit more training, but there are some good folks at the stores who want to help.
 
I use a password manager that is available in several places. More than one device can be the 2fa source and I have a list of one time codes that can be used in a pinch.

The world has moved in a direction where it’s increasingly hard to function without a mobile device.
 
gixxerjeff said:
Modern problems, I know.....
My beloved girlfriend watched her cell phone fly off of the deck of our sailboat and splash hopelessly into the bay.
If it had been an android (like mine) this would've just been an expensive inconvenience....Apple made it a crippling, stress-filled nightmare.
If she had known her iCloud password, this would've been much easier. She did not have the password. There are good reasons for why that is, but not important here.
The loop she found herself in was accessing her iCloud account. She bought a brand new iPhone, but it was essentially useless until she activated her iCloud account to the new phone.
Normally, that's a piece of cake. The problem was, Apple would send a numeric code to her phone, followed by another code to her iCloud account that she could not access.
The "reset" procedure took 6 days. With no instruction provided, she waited the 6 days only to learn that she's missed the "opportunity" by mere minutes. That started the 6 day clock again.
Zero help from Apple support....mostly filled with a bunch of snark about "you shouldn't have lost your password"
Fucking 12 days to recover her data and make her phone work again. Unbelievable. If this was an android phone with a Gmail account, this could have been resolved within minutes, from anywhere in the world.
I hated Apple before......I'm irretrievable now.
Rant over....sorry. :jaded
Click to expand...
Did she buy the new phone at an Apple store? I suspect not, as she would have ID and paid with a matching credit card- curious to see the answer.
 
900ss said:
The moral of this story is twofold; that perhaps the Geniuses need a bit more training, but there are some good folks at the stores who want to help.
Click to expand...
Yes, this is a case where the word “genius” is stretching the truth.
 
Seems to me an easy backup is to write the password, with no hint of what it is, on the back of a couple business cards (yours or someone else's) and leave it at known (to you and family, friends) place like a back of a kitchen drawer- not really hiding it, just an easy place to know. Put others under the carpet of your cars, office desk drawer- again no mention of what the writing is for but you can easily get to it.

Locking it up? Don't bother as there's no clue what you wrote "is". Heck, if you can't recall the password what's going to magically have you remember the safe combo?
 
mjj said:
I experienced the same thing, except I was locked out due to just clicking the "Oops I forgot my password, what's next?" button. So I rage quit Apple and now have an android tablet. I think the most galling thing is that no human ever engages the process. There should be a way to verify yourself without having to wait umpteen days. I could transfer my entire net worth between bank accounts in minutes online, but Apple can't (won't!) help if you lose a password.

I don't use a phone, so it gives me pleasure to respond to "just download the app" with "what's the other option for people who don't have a phone?" This is super disingenuous because I DO have a tablet which has all the function of a phone, but in general, I believe systems should not be established which require specific technology on the part of the customer. Sadly this ethic is likely doomed along with other principles of diversity, equity, or inclusion.
Click to expand...
You couldn’t transfer your $ without your pw. And resetting it would also be difficult if you lost your other authentication method, prob access to your email. Maybe you could call and reset it after confirming your SSN or a pin. You could prob transfer over the phone w a pin. But what if you lost any of that…

Account security is hard for everyone when too many things go wrong.
 
tzrider said:
I use a password manager that is available in several places. More than one device can be the 2fa source and I have a list of one time codes that can be used in a pinch.

The world has moved in a direction where it’s increasingly hard to function without a mobile device.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Some services will only allow payments via their mobile app. It seems we are all tethered to our phones even for just bill pay transactions.
 
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