Regaining iCloud Access
February 24, 2021 8:09 AM   Subscribe

A colleague has lost access to his iCloud account, rendering his phone useless. What are our options?

Our friend had an older iPhone from StraightTalk that bricked and the data was essentially unrecoverable. He bought a new phone and had to get a new phone number, since his original number was attached to the original phone and they were not able to transfer it over. When he got the new phone he could not log in to his iCloud account because the 2-factor authentication required him to either have access to his original phone number or his original email address (which was a college account that he no longer has access to).

Without access to iCloud, he does not have access to his contacts and photos, and he cannot download any apps that are necessary for our work.

He's had dozens of conversations with Apple folks about this over the past week and has not been able to get any answers. I thought it would be helpful to consult the hive mind to see if you could help us identify any possible solutions.
posted by chara to Technology (8 answers total)
 
It seems very strange for a phone number to be linked to a physical phone. Does he still have service with StraightTalk? Is the new phone and phone number with StraightTalk?
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:13 AM on February 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


Has he tried asking the IT department at the college to temporarily re-activate his email so he can get access?
posted by FungusCassetteBicker at 8:13 AM on February 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure how old an "old" iphone is but I have switched among iphone 4s, 5c, and SE and ported my number between various prepaid carriers and never had trouble keeping my number--the number was really linked to my account with the provider, and the provider would let me switch devices. If this weren't possible, it would be a major disincentive for people to ever upgrade their phones because they would have to get a new number to do that, and a place like StraightTalk that sells phones would be motivated for people to upgrade.

I'm wondering if maybe he got bad advice from someone about the feasibility of keeping his number? If it's been less than 30 days since he let go of his old number he might be able to reactivate it. (30 days seems to be the deadline when it's an issue of an account lapsing due to not having paid a bill.)
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:27 AM on February 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


Yeah, the phone number doesn't inhere in the phone. That's not how it works. Straight Talk should release it when asked to port it.
posted by adamrice at 9:17 AM on February 24, 2021 [3 favorites]


Can you pop the StraightTalk sim card into a phone and see if you can still get text messages for the 2 factor authentication? If you don't have a spare phone handy, it looks like you can get one from StraightTalk for $30.
posted by gregr at 11:20 AM on February 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


In order to gain access to the Apple account of a friend who had died, so that I could pass her various iDevices on to those she'd left them to in a way that would actually allow them to activate, I had to use Apple's forgot-password process and add my own phone number to the account for 2FA purposes. I can't remember the exact method by which this was done, but I do remember figuring it out without talking to Apple, just by exercising options on web forms. By the time I was doing this, the email account associated with her Apple ID was long gone.

The process involved a delay of some weeks before the new phone number became active for 2FA, during which Apple's automated account recovery bots were presumably sending notification mails to all the old contacts they had on file to give the legitimate owner a chance to kibosh it, but I did eventually get a notifying text on the new number and was able to log into the account and disconnect the old devices that way, as well as recovering a pile of photos.
posted by flabdablet at 2:57 PM on February 24, 2021


How to use account recovery when you can’t reset your Apple ID password. If you use two-factor authentication and can’t sign in or reset your password, you can regain access after an account recovery waiting period.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204921
posted by apex_ at 3:55 PM on February 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


That's the one! Thanks, apex_.
posted by flabdablet at 4:15 PM on February 24, 2021


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