“Earlier this week, a strange message popped up on my Mac that I thought nothing of. ‘You can’t sign in because your account was disabled for security reasons,'” Owen Williams reports for TNW. “I dismissed it in my tired haze, thinking it would solve itself and went to sleep. The next morning, I didn’t have time to deal with the message — which was now popping up every half hour — for a few hours until it became annoying. I figured I’d done something dumb and broken iCloud, but that it could wait.”
“I’d turned two-factor on my Apple ID in haste when I read Mat Honan’s harrowing story about how his Mac, iPhone and other devices were wiped when someone broke into his iCloud account. That terrified me into thinking about real security for the first time,” Williams reports. “When I finally had time to investigate the errors appearing on my machine, I discovered that not only had my iCloud account been locked, but someone had tried to break in. Two-factor had done its job and kept the attacker out, however, it had also inadvertently locked me out.”
“The sinking feeling began. After fruitlessly searching and a lot of cussing, I decided to call Apple. I figured that something must be wrong, since the support page claims you can use trusted devices to recover your ID in cases like this,” Williams reports. “The first person I spoke to told me immediately after getting on the phone that in no uncertain terms I had forfeit my Apple ID by losing the recovery key.”
The full angst-ridden story is here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bottom line: If you enable Apple’s two-step verification, don’t lose your Apple Recovery Key.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]