I discovered that I was unable to log into my Apple Account and tried to login from icloud.com, which said my password was incorrect. It was weird because there were no emails from apple.com to alert me of a new login or failed login attempt, and all the multi-factor authentication was on.
Quickly realizing this was a top priority task, I tried to reset my password, and it asked me to request account access. After entering the phone number associated with the account, it showed the following content:
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Apple Account Account access requested. We’re reviewing your request to access your account, this process could take a day. Apple Support can’t help you shorten the review time. We’ll contact you at <your account> when the review is complete. |
Then I contacted Apple Support (why not?). The person helped me sort out the situation with my account, and they showed that my account was “inactive” at that time. However, they could not see the reason behind this account deactivation.
Within a day (18 hours), Apple sent me an mail titled “Your Apple Account Request”, which stated:
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Your Apple Account Request Dear Louie, Your request has been approved and you can now sign in to access your account (—@—–.—). Apple |
Now I can use the same password to log back into my account.
Aftermath
My Apple ID was locked down for 18 hours, and some of my app specific functions were down at the same time. Most of my devices were logged out.
Apple Account does not store, or at least does not show, the information of login attempts to their users, so I have no idea why my account got locked in the first place.
I am fortunate that I’m not fully integrated into the Apple ecosystem; otherwise, I would have experienced a larger impact from this incident. It also shows how fragile it is when a root digital identity can be revoked by Apple.
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