My mom is experiencing an annoying problem on her iPhone. She’s getting a popup that wants her to enter her Apple ID password. The only two options are Not Now and Settings.
We are hesitant to enter it (lest it be a scam), but it’s happening almost daily. I asked her what she was doing immediately before it popped up, and she said she was looking at Apple News and Weather apps, both stock.
Does anyone have any clue why this is happening?
Thanks!
Posting a screenshot will help us determine if scam and if not what is the root cause of the pop-up.
Thanks, Al!
Will do at the next occurrence. I’m sure it won’t be long!
It seems to me that she should be able to forget any apps and go straight to the Apple ID section of the phone’s settings. If she got logged out, it will be pretty obvious. Logging back in (or logging out and in again) over there may take care of the problem with other Apple apps.
Is this the popup she is getting?
I have been getting these every few days for several months. I go to Settings and enter the password and then it tells me “Your Apple ID has been locked for Security reasons.” and it gives me some choices on how to unlock the account. After following the prompts and unlocking the account all is well…untll the next time it happens.
I wish I knew what was triggering this…so will be following this thread.
If they have reset somehow, then, like any app downloaded from the App Store, you have to verify that you “bought” or downloaded the app. I think this problem will be fixed if they go to their App Store and sign in once.
The App Store login is separate from your device’s iCloud login.
You can, for example, log out of the App Store (or iTunes Music store or iBooks store), then log in to a different account, and use that account to make purchases or download already-purchased content.
Apple does impose a time delay (I think 30 days) between switching accounts, so you can’t constantly flap between accounts, but there’s nothing else stopping you. My wife and I used to do this to share purchases with each other, since it was once the only way (before Family Sharing was invented).
I have not seen apps stop working as a result of not being logged in to the store from which they were purchased. But if the app uses iCloud for something, then it would, of course, need a valid login.
(This is different for movie/music/book purchases, where DRM may force you to sometimes re-authenticate. But you don’t have to change your login to the corresponding Store app, you just need to provide the Apple ID and password that were used when it was originally purchased.)
Just yesterday I saw a random post on Reddit that’s suggested if you are getting repeated re-authentication prompts for your Apple ID on an Apple device, changing the password of the Apple ID seems to stop it from repeating. A comment to that post suggested a simple Settings / Apple ID / logout and then log back in would do the same.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/s/yexfxLSbBS
Maybe? But both are easy enough to try, with the caveat that logging out and logging in again may trigger a lot of sync activity if you use iCloud Photo Library, and changing passwords means logging in again on all Apple devices using the same Apple ID.
I did not experience a delay sometime in the past two months. I logged out of one account at the (iOS) App Store, into another, out of the other, and back into the first, all in a matter of minutes. (I was checking for app updates in the second account.) I didn’t keep records, but I believe I did the same thing a couple of weeks later. Maybe Apple removed that delay.
Or maybe it’s not for apps. The last time I remember that warning, I was accessing the iTunes Music store. But it was a long time ago, so the policy may have changed since the dawn of Family Sharing.
Here are a couple screenshots: The prompt that appears, as well as the screen that we are taken to after tapping Settings:
She is already signed in to her Apple ID.
I just got the verification prompt earlier today on my iPad (but not the iPhone).
Went through the entire ordeal. Again.
Both of those dialogs look bogus to me. Layout and fonts are atypical. I would not trust them at all, and wonder what’s generating them.
Initially I had a similar impression. But then I considered it’s quite possible that the larger and bold font is just an accessibility setting. The wording matches the Apple original I see on my devices (like what @david_blanchard showed above) exactly.
Looks exactly like dialogs I’ve seen involving my AppleID and if the actual Settings app was in the foreground at the time of the second screenshot (as opposed to a browser), then there is no question in my mind as to its authenticity.
I’m pretty sure that the Settings app was in the foreground, and there was no browser involved. I will double check at the next occurrence. Thanks, @alvarnell!
And as @Simon guessed, my mom does indeed have both a larger and bolder font enabled in Accessibility.
As far as a resolution, should I perhaps sign her out and back in, or just enter the password when prompted and hope it goes away?
Thank you to all who have responded!
-Will
Confirmed that Settings was in the foreground. Entered her password, and it hasn’t happened since. Time will tell. Thanks again to all who responded!
-Will
