I am using Advanced Data Protection on my iPhone. I'm trying to add my wife as an Account Recovery contact for iCloud on my iPhone 11 Pro, running iOS 17.5.1.
I get an error message that only recoveries on iMessage can be added.
However, my wife has an iPhone and is on iMessage.
What can I do?
iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 17
See if anything in these articles might shed some light on the difficulties you’re experiencing:
Set up an account recovery contact - Apple Support
Help a friend or family member as their account recovery contact – Apple Support (AU)
Thank you very much for sending these articles.
They didn't allow me to fix my problem, but they did allow me to understand it.
It's a case of what they call "you can't get heah from theah" as they say in Maine.
The source of the problem is that Apple essentially expects one to have 2 email addresses: 1 for the ID and a 2nd for notifications. My wife does have 2, but her address for the Apple ID is a very old email address that she would actually like to get rid of. (She can't yet for reasons it's not worth going into here.)
What she would like to use for her Apple ID is the email address she actually uses. But Apple won't allow that because that is the one she uses for notifications, and it needs to be separate from the ID.
Bingo! Sounds like you got it.
Once an eMail is used for a Notification eMail, apparently it becomes permanently unusable for re-use as an AppleID.
Another option you might consider: Setup another email (e.g. GMail) which is used ONLY for your AppleID. Keep this eMail totally private.
Never share this “closely-held” AppleID address with any entity but Apple; and don’t email ANYONE but Apple using it.
This reduces your attack surface and helps you better separate “legit” from “phishing” eMails.
Can't add "account recovery contact" for iPhone iOS 17.5 even though on iMessage
