Widespread Problem Has Locked Many Out of Their Apple IDs

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

There appears to be an increasingly widespread Apple ID outage of some sort impacting users tonight. A number of people on social media say that they were logged out of their Apple ID across multiple devices on Friday evening and forced to reset their password before logging back in…

We received our first tip about this around 8 p.m. ET. In the hours since then, the problem has gained significant traction on social media.

Apple’s System Status webpage doesn’t indicate that any of its services are having issues this evening. Still, it’s clear based on social media reports that something wonky is going on behind the scenes at Apple. A few of us here at 9to5Mac have also been directly affected by the problem.

Apple’s separate Developer System Status dashboard lists “Account” as having undergone maintenance and also having additional maintenance scheduled for later today. Apple ought to provide an explanation for exactly what’s gone wrong here, but has not yet.

The lockout hit Michael Tsai (again) and he copiously documented the entire experience, including being required to wait an hour before setting a new password because he has Stolen Device Protection enabled — despite the fact that he was at home, which is supposed to be a trusted location.

I just checked on my own iPhone, and the only two “Significant Locations” listed in Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services → Significant Locations are “Work” and my favorite (and truly oft-visited) grocery store. But the “Work” location is centered three entire city blocks (~0.2 miles) from my home, which leaves my home just outside the radius that counts as that location. Luckily I wasn’t hit by this account lockout, but this also reassures me that I’m right to not yet have enabled Stolen Device Protection.

★ Saturday, 27 April 2024