The Story:

About 12 months ago, I improved my Apple ID by adding 2 Factor Authentication. I believed it was the best I could do to improve my Apple ID security. I was motivated to do that because of the high incidence of hackings. I felt that my Gmail account was not safe. This made me uncomfortable and I decided to beef up the phone security.

What I did was to change my password, and included the 2 factor authentication. When I finished doing that, I took a photograph of what I did. I took note of the recovery key, because it was very important to me as the safety and security of my account depend on that.

…aaaand it happened

Some minutes after completing that process, my account was locked. At that time, I did not know that Mac was trying to communicate with my iCloud account, it was expecting a response from the message they sent about request to effect changes in my password. When a reply was not forthcoming, they finally locked my account. Oh well I ended up permanently disabled apple id.

I was not worried initially because I thought that I already had information I needed to access my account. I thought that I had the recovery key, my password as well as the key. I later discovered that all those things I thought I had were not available because I had already closed the screenshot where the recovery key was saved. I was thoroughly embarrassed and regretted not writing the information down.

The effort of unlocking a Permanently Disabled Apple ID

I went back to the instructions, which said that before you unlock the account, you must provide two out of the three magic information such as the trusted device, password, as well as the recovery key. That would work if I want to reset my password and access my account. This is not the case for me, because my account has already being locked out.

Apple would always assume that you do not know your password again anytime your account is locked out. Apple would help you out by asking you the recovery key to your account. However, this could not work in this circumstance.

Calle Apple

It took me a bit call to Apple support center, as well as a phone call before I could get a response from them. I discovered that my account was locked forever.

The relief

However, there is relief for people who encounter my type of problem, as Apple has introduced 2 Factor Authentication. This is a new option and it can help in account recovery. Things are now easier for you, as you only need to click the option you want such as the trusted device or the account password. Once the information could still be traced in your phone number, which you registered with Apple, then you could access your account. Even if you can still remember your previous password, you can gain access to your account.

I was overwhelmed with this development, because it is a great relief for many people who would have suffered account lock out like me. The implication of this is that account would no longer be locked out permanently; you only need to remember some basic information. This also implies that Apple has finally discovered a solution to the 2 factor authentication rules. You can access your account through a password and your trusted device. There is no doubt that this would make things easier for many people.