Advanced Data Protection (ADP) and iCloud Access Not Working

Today I discovered a convoluted way to access the restricted areas of iCloud.com.

1. With ADP on, go to https://www.icloud.com/recovery/.
2. With the browser open, disable ADP.
3. Rrefresh the browser tab.
4. Reenable ADP.

You remain authorized on iCloud.com. However, your access is restricted to that browser. If you try from another browser you run into the authorization issue.

I’ve had a myriad of iCloud issues going back two years, and I believe they are all inter-related. I had to create a new iCloud account, and that account works perfectly, but it still annoys me that my old account is still screwed up.

Can confirm it works again.

Just tested on both 17.2 and 17.2.1. Both version worked though it takes significantly more time to get past the "Getting Access..." part than it used to. At least I can access my files now.

Following up: I eventually turned off ADP a few days after my first post. Now that Apple has released a few OS updates and a few folks chimed in saying theirs was working now, I can confirm that I re-setup ADP and so far it appears to be working as expected. Let's hope the fix sticks ...

I made a post on this subject earlier this month. Eventually I just turned ADP off entirely.

Now today I see that people are reporting that it's all working. I can verify mine works as expected now.

So, if you have "toggled" ADP on / off, maybe that will help? (Not sure if you already did that, but worth trying if you haven't ...)

Best of luck.

I eventually had to turn off Advanced Data Protection in order to see my iCloud.com content. I didn't want to mess with it but I've wanted to make sure there wasn't some outright data corruption (or broken encryption key). Luckily everything seems intact.

Oh well. I like the idea of ADP but I need to be able to trust it...☹️

brian4819v

It's working fine. I suggested you turn your ADP off on your iPhone, turn it back on. Remember to deprecate/disconnecte the older devices that are still connected to your apple ID that are on an iOS older than 16.2 (the minimum requirement for ADP to be enabled).

I strongly suggest you keep banging on Apple's support door. Point to this URL for proof. And this discussion as well: Advanced Data Protection not authenticati… - Apple Community

The problem with Apple Support is that they are NOT allowed to use ADP as employees. So they cannot fully support ADP. They just give you their 'canned' responses which go nowhere.

ADP users know that once it is broken, you may a lot of noise in forums like this, in LinkedIn, other social media accounts then eventually Apple will fix it in the background. How would you know? It just starts working.

Update: Apple support is absolutely useless on this topic. I reverted back deactivating ADR again as web access is an important feature for me. It's a shame and another nail in the coffin to move away from the apple ecosystem at some point as things like this happen more and more in the past years...

It was finally fixed after someone else in this discussion contacted Apple Support.

However, before it was fixed, I was able workaround it by doing this, but it did not work for everyone.

It didn't work. I did exactly what you said I would do. Still shows:

Getting Access⁠

Your device is giving iCloud.com temporary access to display your notes.

after allowing it on my iPhone and then it times out:

Can’t Display Your Notes

Your device hasn’t given access to display your notes. Check that it is on and connected to the internet.

Try Again

Ok, so I'm not the only one. This is very frustrating. Sometimes I get the notifications to all my devices and no matter what I do I can't gain access to iCloud.com content. Other times it doesn't even bother to send the notification. Unsure what to do outside of turning off ADP which I'd rather not mess with.

I've found a GREAT secure alternate as Apple can't get their act together:

https://app.standardnotes.com/

It is outstandingly secure (ask any AI app).

Standard Notes uses XChaCha20-Poly1305, which is one of the strongest forms of encryption available and is recommended by leading technology companies like Cloudflare and Google as a replacement to AES-256. This encryption is applied to all data, including notes, tags, and other user-generated content, using keys generated from the user's password. The encryption and decryption process occurs entirely offline and on the user's device, and the data is synced to the user's private notes account over a secure, encrypted connection

Additionally, the Standard Notes Protocol ensures client-side encryption of data in such a way that makes it impossible for the server to read or decrypt the data, treating the server as a dumb data-store that simply saves and returns values on demand

Also, Standard Notes uses a password-stretching algorithm called Argon2 to strengthen the user's password and generate the necessary keys. When a user enters a local passcode, the correctness of the passcode is verified through the use of a hash, and the password is further processed using Argon2 to generate the derived key, which is then used for encryption and decryption. This approach ensures that the user's password is hashed and processed securely to protect the encryption keys and, consequently, the user's data.

Until Apple proves that ADP is stable, I am going to keep it on (for security sake) but not rely on it.

By the way, Apple support says they can't tell whether ADP is working or not as they are not allowed to use iCloud. That's rather inane. So they have no way of testing it. Rather dumb, in my opinion.