Password Prompt for Unknown Apple ID

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Click ▶︎ Reject unknown sign-in attempts to prevent a hijack of your account.

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this is a very thorough and helpful answer. the best i’ve seen in respect to this issue. i thank you for the information.

this fits _most_ situations, but i have also had this issue, and i don’t quite fit into these scenarios.

lemme explain my differences.

1. i bought my ios device (iphone11) new and have only ever signed in with one apple id, and this id and my phone number have never been used on any other device.

2. i have never loaned my device to anyone, for any reason.

3. i have no subscriptions.

4. all purchases/installs have been made by me from the official app store and i am not sharing purchases with any family members nor do they share any with me.

5. imessage and facetime both have the correct apple id and phone number, and no others have ever been entered or used.

6. i’m receiving email from two accounts: one google and one yahoo. both are set to manual fetch. i am connected to only one icloud account. (i didn’t know you could connect to more than one at a time. i will have to look into this further when i have time.)

also, i have automatic updates disabled for both the os and the app store, and the device was in low data mode, no wifi connection, and background data is off.

the last time i received the prompt (asking for password verification for an apple id with a gmail address i’d never seen before) there were no apps open in the background and i was about half hour into playing a game (two-dots) which i’ve been playing for about a year.

after the pop-up, i checked the app store, and the game did not have any new updates.

i can think of no other details that might be of use in trying to discover the cause of this issue.

i am totally at a loss as to what might be causing this to have happen. i suppose spyware installed by a girlfriend while i was sleeping isn’t outside the realm of possibility, but i’ve no idea how to even begin to try and sort out something like that. besides, i don’t have any of my banking info or anything of great consequence stored in my phone, and i’m really not a very interesting person or all that entertaining when it comes right down to it. so let them spy all they want as long as it doesn’t shorten my battery life or slow my activities noticeably, right?

any ideas as to what may be causing this to occur in my scenario?

What you describe does not sound like what was being presented in an earlier reply about rejecting sign-in attempts. Yours sounds like a request for a verification password ("Password Prompt for Unknown Apple ID"). This can be because you have an app somebody else downloaded when you lent them your device, or you are signed in with a different ID on one of the services where this is possible. There are several likely places where you can use a different Apple ID:

1. In Mail if you want to use a different, or more than one, iCloud account. Settings -> mail -> accounts -> add account -> iCloud

2. Messages and Facetime. Sign into a different Apple ID for these services in Settings. Note this has to be the same ID for both. Go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive, and make sure both your telephone number and Apple ID are input there and both show a checkmark. If you need more help, check this link: Add or remove your phone number in Messages or FaceTime - Apple Support .

3. In the support article: If you subscribe to Apple One and use a different Apple ID for iCloud - Apple Support Apple alludes to using a different Apple ID just for media, subscriptions, and purchases, but doesn't describe how to do this. See if these work:

In iOS/iPadOS: Go to Settings > [your Apple ID] > Media & Purchases. Sign out of the current ID and sign in with a different one.

In Ventura or later: First, quit Settings. Then, in App Store, choose “Sign Out” in the Store menu, then click on the “sign in” button that appears in the main window. You can then sign into the other account. (from: Using different Apple ID for media & … - Apple Community )

4. Use a different Apple ID to share purchases with Family Sharing as outlined in Use a different Apple ID to share purchases with Family Sharing - Apple Support

If you bought your device secondhand or lent it to another user it is probably a relic sign-in.