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Strange Apple ID

L

lukestrohbehn

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 9, 2013
7
1
I am currently traveling outside of the United States, and so I have turned my phone on airplane mode while keeping wifi on.
Halfway through the week, I was receiving the pop up messages saying that I needed to sign in to my iCloud. After entering my password 3 times, Apple told me my phone had been locked and the password had to be reset.
I was pretty frustrated with this, but thought that my usage of the VPN Hotspot Shield (I have been using it to watch Netflix shows that only stream in the U.S.) had caused apple to think that someone else was signing in to my account. After resetting my password, I tried downloading an app from the App Store. Again I received the message that my account was locked and that I had to reset my password. I went to the iCloud settings, and noticed that my primary iCloud account email was one *****@163.com, an email I certainly hadn't created. I went to 163.com and it is a very strange Chinese website.
With no way to remove this email, I am stuck. I got this iPhone 5s several weeks before leaving the country from my insurance company after breaking my old iPhone.
Any way I can remove this address from my Apple ID? Am I a victim of phishing? I have no credit cards attached to the account, just iTunes money related to the account.
Thank you for the help!
 
Honestly, it looks like someone has broken into your account :(
By the sound of it you have not had two-step verification enabled, otherwise criminals would have hit the trusted device verification.
However, if the two-step verification was not on, Apple support might have better access to your account, so it's worth calling them (use Skype if you're abroad)
 
This story doesn't make sense.
Your insurance company gave you an icloud locked replacement device to someone else's icloud ID?
Contact them to have it resolved.
There's no way to bypass icloud activation so you have a useless device.
 
lukestrohbehn said:
I am currently traveling outside of the United States, and so I have turned my phone on airplane mode while keeping wifi on.
Halfway through the week, I was receiving the pop up messages saying that I needed to sign in to my iCloud. After entering my password 3 times, Apple told me my phone had been locked and the password had to be reset.
I was pretty frustrated with this, but thought that my usage of the VPN Hotspot Shield (I have been using it to watch Netflix shows that only stream in the U.S.) had caused apple to think that someone else was signing in to my account. After resetting my password, I tried downloading an app from the App Store. Again I received the message that my account was locked and that I had to reset my password. I went to the iCloud settings, and noticed that my primary iCloud account email was one *****@163.com, an email I certainly hadn't created. I went to 163.com and it is a very strange Chinese website.
With no way to remove this email, I am stuck. I got this iPhone 5s several weeks before leaving the country from my insurance company after breaking my old iPhone.
Any way I can remove this address from my Apple ID? Am I a victim of phishing? I have no credit cards attached to the account, just iTunes money related to the account.
Thank you for the help!
Click to expand...
Probably you were given a device that had not had "find my iPhone" turned off before it was traded in (or maybe originally it was stolen). I used to work at Microcenter and ran into this all the time because customers would return iPads and not turn that off and customer service at first didn't know to have them do it. I learned to move a few steps through the set-up screen on clearance iPads to make sure it wasn't locked before I let the next customer go home with it.
But you won't be able to bypass it and Apple in all likelihood won't do anything either. I'd take it up with the insurance company.
 
Applejuiced said:
This story doesn't make sense.
Your insurance company gave you an icloud locked replacement device to someone else's icloud ID?
Contact them to have it resolved.
There's no way to bypass icloud activation so you have a useless device.
Click to expand...
No, I broke my phone, reported it to my insurance company, they sent me a new phone. I said nothing about an Apple ID being on the phone when I got it. Sorry if that was unclear.
 
So your Apple ID was on the phone and now it has been taken off and replaced by this new apple ID??
 
laudern said:
So your Apple ID was on the phone and now it has been taken off and replaced by this new apple ID??
Click to expand...

Doesn't work like that.

Apple ID's don't change on the devices unless they are manually changed. If his password was changed online, it will prompt any device that WAS using his ID for the new password. If he did not have 2 step authentication turned on, he's pretty much screwed.

Of all the ID's to have 2 step authentication turned on for - Your AppleID is one!
 
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I had a very similar thing happen to me.

I wanted to sell an Apple iPhone 6Plus that I had purchased directly from Apple. I sold it on Swappa, turned off "find my iphone", reset the phone and fedexed it to my buyer.

The buyer received it and found it was locked to some yahoo address. I've never had a yahoo address. I ended up having to contact Apple with my proof of purchase to have them remove the activation lock. I'm starting to think that someone somehow has figured out how to "grab" iPhone activation and lock devices to their own account. I don't know why they'd do this without the physical device in hand...but something is afoot.

Update:
Forgot to mention, when I put this info into Swappa, the swappa mod was very interested because the EXCACT same thing happened to him as well. In his case also with a @163.com address. 163 is a Chinese version of a free email provider like gmail.
 
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Interesting Insurance company giving you an iPhone. My insurance company will give me a check, not a phone. which insurance do you have ?
 
ABC5S said:
Interesting Insurance company giving you an iPhone. My insurance company will give me a check, not a phone. which insurance do you have ?
Click to expand...

My insurance gives a new sealed phone. If I contact them by 12 midday they will have a new phone to me that day, after midday and I would have to wait until the next morning.
 
I would be curious to know what Apple has to say about how this can happen.
 
The outside of the box has the serial number and the IMEI number. Would that be enough information for someone to hijack it even before it's activated or at a later time?
 
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