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Unlocked iPhone 6S Suddenly Became Locked.

Lancetx said:
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recent Yahoo hack since there were over 500 million accounts compromised with that.
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Didn't see this thread until after I started my own.

I have never had a Yahoo account and it still happened to me.
 
Lancetx said:
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recent Yahoo hack since there were over 500 million accounts compromised with that.
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Good point. This exact scenario happened to me before I went to turn in my 6s. My Apple ID is associated with my Yahoo email. So I wouldn't be surprised.
 
JulesJam said:
Mine too, they insisted that I or someone else had to have done it and that there was no way it could have happened without someone being in physical possession of the phone. No one had touched the phone but me.

I started thinking someone had broken into my house, lol! Gtk that I wasn't the only one this happened to.
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Mine was definitely brand new in shrink wrap.

I am sure it was an iCloud thing, likely a hack that Apple won't admit to.
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Mine was locked to a yahoo email too.
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Was it to a different email? Because mine got locked to the same email twice but I think I forgot to do something Apple told me to do. Can't remember now it happened at the beginning of the year.
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It was tied to an email that began with an o and ended with iCloud.com. I have never had such an account. Both times it locked to the same email account. Apple support was completely puzzled. They checked my account to make sure as well as make sure my account wasn't compromised.
 
Lancetx said:
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recent Yahoo hack since there were over 500 million accounts compromised with that.
Click to expand...

I can't speak to others but my personal AppleID is tied to a Time Warner Cable Roadrunner email account and not yahoo in any way.
 
auero said:
It was tied to an email that began with an o and ended with iCloud.com. I have never had such an account. Both times it locked to the same email account. Apple support was completely puzzled. They checked my account to make sure as well as make sure my account wasn't compromised.
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Why not try and send an email to that address and explain the situation without revealing any personal info or going into any details?
 
JulesJam said:
But how would hacking yahoo lock an iPhone to a yahoo email?
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If they know your Yahoo password and/or if you use the same password for other sites, I'm sure a crook could figure out how to do it. Just trying to figure out how this seems to be happening so frequently lately is all.

It seems the key here too is if you ever really do get your iPhone stolen or it's lost, put it into lost mode ASAP so that it can't/won't be unlocked by Apple.
 
mackiee said:
Why not try and send an email to that address and explain the situation without revealing any personal info or going into any details?
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You can't... it only tells you the first letter of the email and then blocks the rest out. The provider is left visible.
 
Had this happen with my moms iPhone 4. I kept trying all the passwords and nothing worked. Had to get her a new phone.

Apple didn't wanna reveal to me the email being used for activation lock and couldn't find the receipt for the phone as it was a few years old.
 
TheKricket said:
Hey gang! I posted this to the Apple discussion forums with no responses, so hopefully one of you fine folks may be able to save me!!!

This is an interesting, and incredibly frustrating, issue. Apologies for the long post but I'm not sure what information is pertinent to the issue so I'm giving all of it.

TL;DR: I purchased an iPhone 6S full-price and outright directly from an Apple Store in September 2015. The phone was unlocked (I switched from T-Mobile to Verizon after I purchased it without issue). I recently purchased an iPhone 7 Plus and after that phone was activated on Verizon's network, the iPhone 6S now indicates that it has an "Activation Lock". It is also linked to some unknown iCloud account (not the account I activated it with or have been using it with for close to a full year).

Background:

In September 2015, I purchased an iPhone 6S from a physical Apple Store. I bought it outright under no contractual terms. I purchased the T-Mobile variant as that was the carrier that I was using at the time. I also let the salesperson know that I was planning on switching to Verizon in the near future and he assured me that it wasn't a problem because the T-Mobile variant was unlocked (in fact, I never even provided him with my T-Mobile account information since it wasn't necessary for the transaction). This was later confirmed when I switched to Verizon a few months later with no issues whatsoever. I popped the Verizon SIM card into the T-Mobile iPhone and it activated within seconds. Great! I didn't feel so awful shelling out over $1,000 for the phone, case and AppleCare+ knowing that I could do whatever I wanted with the phone when I was done using it.

I very recently pre-ordered and have received my new iPhone 7 Plus. I ordered it through Apple's upgrade program (since I like to upgrade my phones a lot). The new phone came with a new Verizon SIM card installed. I fired it up and it activated, again, within seconds. No problems there - I'm happily sporting the iPhone 7 Plus as I type this.

The old phone (the iPhone 6S), I decided, I would give to my mother since she is using a beat-up hand-me-down iPhone 5 with a crack in the screen. First order of business: I synced her phone and prepared an up-to-date backup that I could use to restore my old phone from. I disabled Find My iPhone on the 6S, signed out of iCloud on the device itself, removed the device from my Apple Support profile and then did a full reset ("Erase All Content and Settings"). I now had, what I thought, was a fresh, unlocked iPhone 6S to work with.

I plugged it into the computer and selected my mom's backup to restore from. Instead of a smooth transition (as has happened with several old iPhones I've had), I'm greeted with an error message stating that the phone was under an "Activation Lock". It asks me to sign in with the account originally used to activate it. The only problem with that is that the account it shows is some iCloud account that starts with the letter "z". I have NO email accounts, iCloud or otherwise, that begin with the letter "z". I typed in MY iCloud information (that I use on an almost daily basis across several other Apple devices) and it tells me that that account "cannot be used to activate this phone" (something to that effect, at least). That is the account I originally activated the phone with! No other accounts have EVER been associated with that phone. I used it personally up until the day I received my iPhone 7 Plus.

So now - my unlocked iPhone 6S somehow became "locked" and associated with some mystery iCloud account. How the heck did this happen? How do I fix it when it's telling me that the account information is incorrect? WHY the heck did this happen? I followed all of the proper steps Apple says to take when giving away your old phone. From Apple's site: "When you erase your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Find My iPhone and Activation Lock is turned off".

What do I do now? I just wanted to surprise my mom with a pristine condition iPhone 6S that I have lovingly cared for and, instead, I have a $1,000 paperweight.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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This is exactly my story:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-or-3-d-party-locked-my-iphone6.1936312/

It took for me 2-3 days to unlock the phone after I contacted Apple and sent them a copy of my reciept. After that I had the same story with my other device.
 
Interesting, I've not had this problem or heard of it before.

I hope these are truly glitches and not a sign of things to come... it would be outright orwellian if the hardware is registered and locked to the individual customer.
 
auero said:
I'm surprised how many customers experienced this. My senior advisor couldn't find incidents like mine in the system. He was very helpful and persistent in helping me. What's more surprising is that mine was locked for a second time within 19 hours. I'm guessing no one else had that issue.
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That's bc apple is taught to deny everything lol.

When my iPhone 4 lost reception over and over apple kept denying it in the store. It was finally when apple admitted the problem they stopped denying it. Same with the 5 scratches.
 
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Thank you to EVERYONE in this thread. I cannot tell you how happy I am to confirm that I'm not going crazy.

How the heck could this possibly be happening to so many people?!?!

For what it's worth - my Apple ID is attached to a gmail account. The same one I've been using since my very first iPhone. So, at least in my situation, I doubt it has anything to do with the Yahoo hack. This is an Apple problem and if the engineers think it's curious and can't figure it out, I'm guessing it's pretty serious. Makes me question the security of the iPhone...

Also - I bought my phone, the 6S, on September 29, 2015. That year, the phones were released in store on the 25th. I suppose it's possible that someone returned a phone, Apple re-shrink wrapped it and sold it to me within a 4 day period, but I'd say it's unlikely. I think that this points to a larger "bug"...
 
I had the exact same problem. My iPhone 6S Plus.
I removed from Find my iPhone, erased all content and settings, removed from hardware profile and iCloud account devices.

A day letter - it was activation locked to a different iCloud account

While Apple support said - very strange, impossible, etc. I went to the store I purchased it with the receipt and they removed the activation lock. (This took hours between calling support and going the store)

The iPhone never left my sight (or home) since I erased it.

Apple is clearly having an issue they will not admit to,

Maybe it needs to be posted on Macrumors as a reported issue by several forum members and maybe Apple will pay attention.





TheKricket said:
Thank you to EVERYONE in this thread. I cannot tell you how happy I am to confirm that I'm not going crazy.

How the heck could this possibly be happening to so many people?!?!

For what it's worth - my Apple ID is attached to a gmail account. The same one I've been using since my very first iPhone. So, at least in my situation, I doubt it has anything to do with the Yahoo hack. This is an Apple problem and if the engineers think it's curious and can't figure it out, I'm guessing it's pretty serious. Makes me question the security of the iPhone...

Also - I bought my phone, the 6S, on September 29, 2015. That year, the phones were released in store on the 25th. I suppose it's possible that someone returned a phone, Apple re-shrink wrapped it and sold it to me within a 4 day period, but I'd say it's unlikely. I think that this points to a larger "bug"...
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mackiee said:
I think Apple have more than one shrink wrap machine... Was this phone a replacement for another one that you maybe returned within the "14-day window"?
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I ordered it directly from Verizon ship to home. It was a brand new line, no replacements.
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likegadgets said:
I had the exact same problem. My iPhone 6S Plus.
I removed from Find my iPhone, erased all content and settings, removed from hardware profile and iCloud account devices.

A day letter - it was activation locked to a different iCloud account

The iPhone never left my sight (or home) since I erased it.
Click to expand...
Similar thing happened to me except when I first activated the iP6s, I did not input an Apple ID. I just wanted to test it to see if it worked. Then I factory reset it. After the factory reset, that is when it was locked to a yahoo email that I had never heard of before.

likegadgets said:
Apple is clearly having an issue they will not admit to,
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ITA.
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TheKricket said:
Also - I bought my phone, the 6S, on September 29, 2015. That year, the phones were released in store on the 25th. I suppose it's possible that someone returned a phone, Apple re-shrink wrapped it and sold it to me within a 4 day period, but I'd say it's unlikely. I think that this points to a larger "bug"...
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Bought mine right before Christmas of 2015, shipped to me directly from Verizon's warehouse. Shrinkwrapped, brand new. I did not buy through Apple, I bought from Verizon.
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Lancetx said:
If they know your Yahoo password
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I don't have a yahoo account. This yahoo email was not mine, I don't have a yahoo email and never have.
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Lancetx said:
Just trying to figure out how this seems to be happening so frequently lately is all.
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You don't understand what happened to us. I don't have a yahoo email and never have. So any yahoo hacking doesn't affect me. I have nothing to do with yahoo.

There is no way that someone hacking yahoo could cause an iPhone that I own to be locked to a yahoo email when I don't use yahoo at all and never have.

This is an Apple problem. Something is terribly wrong with Apple's activation servers. It happened after a factory reset when I tried to reactivate the device. The device was never locked to any Apple ID. Then I factory reset it and it was locked to a yahoo email. That means something went wrong with Apple's activation servers. When I went to reactivate it after the factory reset, the activation servers locked it to a yahoo email I had never heard of.

Again, I have never had a yahoo email in my life and don't use yahoo at all. Hacking yahoo couldn't have caused this. This is an Apple problem.
 
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OMG, you're not the only one. I am so hella pissed at Apple for making me do a lot of work to prove that my iPhone 6s is mine when their system has been hacked and compromised.

My phone is showing that it's a @yahoo.com even tho my iCloud account ends at @me.com, and according to an Apple rep, it's coming from CHINA!!! Now my old phone is rendered useless, my mom was supposed to have this phone last week but now I can't even prove to Apple the iPhone is mine and their only giving me less than a week to prove it. But I'm too busy with life right now!! UGHHHHHSJSKXMSMDMD
 
humanresources said:
OMG, you're not the only one. I am so hella pissed at Apple for making me do a lot of work to prove that my iPhone 6s is mine when their system has been hacked and compromised.

My phone is showing that it's a @yahoo.com even tho my iCloud account ends at @me.com, and according to an Apple rep, it's coming from CHINA!!! Now my old phone is rendered useless, my mom was supposed to have this phone last week but now I can't even prove to Apple the iPhone is mine and their only giving me less than a week to prove it. But I'm too busy with life right now!! UGHHHHHSJSKXMSMDMD
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Where did you buy it from?
 
I can see that this can cause some serious problems if you want to sell your phone to someone else... You wipe it, send it in the mail and then the buyer can't get by the activation lock.
 
I had the same problem.

I sold my iPhone 6S through ebay and when the buyer received it, it was locked with a yahoo email.

I had to contact apple and get it unlocked, it took about a week to resolve :(
 
JulesJam said:
They can get you a copy of the receipt. Who purchased it?
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Me. The matter was fixed, after waiting 2 hours to get it fixed. My issue is that, people who have purchased a used iPhone and encounters this predicament, then their screwed. SoL
 
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