Just this week, I assisted a client who found herself in trouble due to forgotten passwords - for both her Apple ID and her Mac. 

When she tried to do a password reset of her Apple password, a message popped up on her Mac asking her to confirm her Mac password, so that she could then enter a new password.

Unfortunately, as I see quite often with Mac users, her Mac just turns on without asking for a password - so she had no idea what the Mac's 'master' password was. So she faced a roadblock that was tricky to get around.

What would have been handy in this case is a new feature that Apple has introduced as part of iOS/iPadOS 15 - where you can nominate a person (in fact, up to 5 people) as a Recovery Contact.

This question has been asked a few time this week, so I thought it worth re-publishing an article that was written in December last year.  

In fact, it's an article that I wrote for my own Mum, who was really confused over messages appearing on her iPhone saying someone from 'St Kilda Rd' was trying to access one of her devices.

Here is a link to the article, for anyone suffering the same confusion.

• I keep getting  a message showing a sign-in is requested from a strange location. (In Melbourne, it shows St Kilda.)         

This has been a common problem encountered by so many iTandCoffee clients.  In fact, we have already had seen two clients this week who have had the problem (and it's only Tuesday!).

Contact iTandCoffee on 1300 885 420 if you need help to solve this problem.

​If you are 'not so local' and are not yet a member, why not join The iTandCoffee Club to gain access to our huge library of great tips like this.​

During this past fortnight, I visited a client who had a tricky problem with iCloud.

In a fairly standard appointment with a family, I was assisting in 'untangling' their iCloud mess, where some of the kids' devices had Mum's Apple ID used for iCloud and others had Dad's.  As mentioned in another post this week, this was causing all sorts of havoc with mis-directed messages, full iClouds and more.

The problem came when we tried to 'sign out' of Dad's Apple ID on the daughter's device.

The password for Dad's Apple ID had been forgotten.  This is not normally a problem, and a forgotten password can (usually) be fairly easily reset.

(Here is an article that describes how to reset a forgotten Apple password.)

In using the iforgot.apple.com webpage to try to perform this reset, we found that the Apple ID that was used for the daughter's device did not exist - so the password could not be reset.

How was this possible?

How was this possible, given that there was a device signed in to iCloud using this Apple ID?

It turned out that the father had moved on from a job, and no longer had the email address that was associated with the Apple ID.

So, he had signed in the appleid.apple.com and changed the email address to a new, current email address.

HOWEVER ...

The mistake he made was not signing out of iCloud on all of the devices that used this Apple ID BEFORE he changed the email address.

Now, the old Apple ID doesn't exist - so attempts to sign out of any iCloud account attached to that address are unsuccessful.

If he still had access to that old email address, he could sign in his Apple account at appleid.apple.com and temporarily change his account's email address back to the old email address so that he could then sign out the still-attached devices.

But changing back to the old email address requires that he can receive a 'verify' email at that email address - something this father could not do, given that he no longer has access to the account.

What can this family do to resolve the problem?

The only option in this case is to talk to Apple - over the phone, not at an Apple Store - to try to sort this out.  If Apple cannot find a record of the old Apple ID, they might be stuck , never able to sign that device out of the incorrect Apple ID.

The moral of the story?

DO NOT change your Apple account email address UNTIL you have signed out of iCloud on every device that uses that Apple ID.

If the Mac is recorded against your brother's Apple ID for support purposes, he can log in and disassociate it so that you could register it (if you wasn't) against your own Apple ID. 

You can then (if you want to) associate it to your Apple ID for support purposes. 

Not essential though. 

Read about the Apple personal support site in this article ...
http://www.macworld.com/article/2599296/the-apple-customer-support-site-thats-built-just-for-you.html

He would also need to sign out of his accounts in various places and wipe data and mail, remove his Keychain data,etc. 

For further help with setting up a new or second-hand Mac, contact iTandCoffee on 1800 885 420.