Happened to me too around 5PM Arizona time 4/26.
Yep, same here at 8:15 pm EDT just night while watching AppleTV+ and doing nothing else, not even checking my phone.
I started to step through the hoops but remembered reading about the scam where messages pop up that wear you down until you click on the wrong thing and they can then get in. I knew this was different but thought it might be a variation so called Apple support.
After a 20 wait on hold, I spoke with a fairly clueless rep who was in over his head and I ended up insisting I talk with an Apple Engineer.
That was a major turning point and she was able to guide me through (except that she could never do a screen share, likely due to being logged out of iCloud).
An hour and 20 minutes later and it got sorted but must reset everywhere.
Exclusively use a .Mac account as my Apple ID.
Here is my post in the earlier thread:
So what is to stop a malicious person guessing, or discovering, an AppleID email and attempting to log into iCloud with it numerous times so that a lock-out by Apple is triggered? Not to break into an account - just to be a nuisance…
------- update ----
Unfortunately login systems that were developed many years ago seem to assume that there are not malicious people out there who delight in disrupting people’s lives. Assuming this is the cause of so many instances of password resets (and not technical issue at Apple) then the only protection may be that you are one of billions of emails out there for these creeps to try.
John Gruber reported that the Apple developer system status dashboard on Friday night showed that maintenance was happening for “accounts” though Apple’s normal status dashboard page showed no issues that night. My suspicion that this was something Apple triggered internally Friday night during this maintenance rather than people trying to trigger these errors maliciously. But it sure would be nice of Apple to explain exactly what happened, or what they think happened. I know it’s a weekend, but still…
Not having experienced either, I wonder what distinguishes this as Apple but this one as not Apple: Beware of Attacks Using Password Reset Request Notifications - TidBITS
I wonder why not me (or any others in our household), and why so many others.
I have an iPhone 12 mini at 17.4.1, iPad 12.9 (rev1) at 16.7.7, Mac Studio at 12.7.4. I don’t use iCloud for anything.
The same thing happened to me mid-evening last Friday. A message popped up on my watch telling me to log in. All my attempts to follow the instructions and reset resulted in a hang until I rebooted everything.
This morning, I am trying to track down and redo all my application passwords.
The whole experience created a level of stress that I didn’t need. Especially given all the password-reset brute-force scams out there.
This happened to a few customers last week but their accounts were really locked as they weren’t even allowed to change their passwords (an error ‘unsupported Apple ID’ appears when using the procedure through ‘Apple Support’ app on iOS).
We are still waiting answers from Apple…
I just had what looks like a variant: iCloud would not recognize the one-time password that I’ve been using with BusyCal for years.
yea, my iCloud got locked out of nowhere.
I thought it was fat thumbs. Guess not.
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Glad to find out it’s not just me. I’ve been working with Apple senior support for three weeks with no success yet. I don’t think it’ll be coming. So far, fingers crossed, I’ve only had one Mac device create a lockout. My problem is on a Windows 10 pro machine in whatever browser I try to use. I could not get iCloud for Windows app to accept sign in either. There is a 404 not found error in a window when I hover over the icon in the taskbar but it doesn’t actually show on the screen when I tried to sign into iCloud for Windows app. Also, curiously I’ve noticed a pattern that after the failed attempts to login, I get a message on my iPhone to confirm login. It’s like there’s something out of sync. It’s like a timeout is occurring because I did not respond to confirm an attempted login but I never get until after the failure.
I also have 2 apple id’s. My old iTools/.Mac (Remember .Mac? and iDisk?) locked me out and my other (from a custom domain) did not. Of course the .Mac email is my primary though.
Ah, I’m very glad to see that I’m in good company as at the time that it was happening to me, I thought that someone had hacked (or attempted to) my account! I looked all over the internet for other reporting parties of the event but couldn’t find a single instance. I was locked out of everything for about 20 minutes, before I was ultimately able to enter a new password and create new app specific passwords.
I have several different Apple accounts but this only happened to my oldest which I’ve had since 2008 or something.
Glad to hear the password reset has worked for you. I have reset password more than 5 times (with lg outs from all the devices, which is a pain) and still cannot login to iCloud on a Windows 10 Pro machine.
This just happened to my wife. Her Apple Watch 6 was misbehaving so we decided to unpair it and restore from backup. Just as she started the restore, she got the locked out message along with a note that since she is in an unfamiliar location (our condo which we inhabit six days a month) she would have to wait an hour and then reset her password. 45 minutes to go.
[edit] Before the hour went by she was again asked to enter her password and trusted phone number. She did and her account was immediately unlocked with no need to wait and hour and no need to change the password and no mention of being in an unfamiliar location.
As for Apple Support; my recent experience as been dismal. My 15" M2 MBA was experience SMTP TLS authentication errors. I spoke with a dozen low lever support people and was referred to three different and successive senior support people. None of them seem to have a clue and each ended up ghosting me; refusing to respond to phone calls or email messages. I remain stunned by this behavior.
This is nothing new. It has been happening to me for years, usually at least one a month, and sometimes several times in one day or a couple of days.
I have two Apple IDs as many do, going back to the early days when there were separate services. I use one for iCloud and one for purchases, but it only happens the the iCloud one. (I have asked several times whether it was possible to merge the purchases into the iCloud account, but no! 
)
I had thought of ringing Apple, but never got around to it. Seems like I saved myself some time since Apple does not seem to be able to help.
My assumption was that someone had been trying to login to my account, but the failed password attempts had caused the account to be locked. Could it be that suddenly more Apple accounts are being attacked like this now?
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I have always wondered about this. Seems like it would be a way for someone to really screw with you if they wanted to be malicious. In practice, I’ve never actually seen that happen that I know of. However, someone who has a similar ID to me might repeatedly try to log in with the wrong user ID, causing a forced password reset. I’m constantly getting emails meant for someone else with the same name as me, but a slightly different email address. Very annoying.
This happened to me just the other day. I’ve never seen a “Locked password” message before, so I wondered if someone had been hammering my account. I immediately checked iCloud system status but it was OK. So I had to change my password on all three devices that I use.
Has Apple said anything publicly about this incident? It’s a real black eye for them from where I sit. Four days later, I’m still picking up the pieces from having been logged out of everything connected to iCloud and my Apple ID.
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I had something similar happen. Rather than risk divulging any information I rebooted the computer which solved THATN problem. It is worth a try on this one.
Add me to the list of victims. As an early adopter, I have a .mac account, which seems to be a key to all this. My wife used a gmail.com address for her account and had no issues. I have been able to get several Apple units, phone/watch/iPads/MAC OS machines but I still have a few days before all are unlocked. My biggest concern is with Apple and their consistent silence if there is an issue like this. I felt pure panic when this hit Friday evening. “Has my entire Apple account been compromised”? On Saturday, I called Apple. I was not able to open my MAC using my watch. I asked about the reported problem from the night before, sighted several MAC-focused news outlets’ reports, and was met with a “Have not heard about any of that.” I imagine she put me on hold to check with her supervisor and came back with the same comment: nothing wrong here. I expected much more from the company I was “siloed” with.
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