Your iPhone Unlock Passcode Has Expired

This has happened to me a couple of times, and today, I found a solution. On a different device - not your iPhone - go to appleid.apple.com and change your password; then on your iPhone, change your passcode! Do not - REPEAT - do not enter your passcode in the dialogue box that's locking your phone - this is hacking. I was on the phone with Apple support for about 4 hours yesterday - and one hint from one person about going to the website fixed this issue. Apple support also told me that I should enter my passcode in the dialogue box - and I had to remind her that Apple would not HOLD MY PHONE HOSTAGE for my passcode. My goodness - I don't jump because someone says to. Good luck!

If she has a Echange account set up on the phone, whether in the native mail app or the outlook app, the administrators can enforce policies on the device, including required passcode changes.

There is nothing malicious here.

It's normal.

Jecomer wrote:

It was my understanding that passcodes did not have an expiration. My only thought is that her University email (MS Exchange), which is setup in the native iPhone mail app (NOT the MS Exchange app), may have somehow forced the changing of the passcode. I did a search for any information related to this issue and almost all the information on the web is from third party apps. There was little or no information that I could find in the Apple Community, Reddit or any other forums.

Yes, if her work/university email address is set up on her phone, that can affect a number of things. The Exchange administrator can do things like force her to update the password. You should be able to easily test this by removing the university account from the phone. If the problem stops, you will know that is the reason.

I'm glad the University confirmed that it was their policy. I can certainly understand how, if you were 1) unaware work accounts could do this and 2)not properly notified that they would do this that it would be quite concerning.

Best of luck.