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User profile for user: UberCraig
UberCraig Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

iOS 7 Only Allows Find My iPhone with Primary iCloud Account

While iOS7 may be a big leap forwards in most respects, the "Find my iPhone" feature has taken a big step in reverse. This useful feature is NO LONGER AVAILABLE for use with secondary iCloud accounts, ONLY your PRIMARY account.


This may not be a huge concern for most users, because many (including most first-tier tech reps at Apple I've spoken to) seem to believe that you can only have one iCloud account on a device. NOT TRUE. While you can only have one PRIMARY account, you can add multiple additional iCloud EMAIL accounts (go to Settings/Mail, Contacts & Calendars/Add Account/iCloud). In the last iOS, once you created a new, secondary iCloud email address, you could activate many iCloud features for use with the new account, including Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, Notes, Safari Data (which never actually worked), and Find My iPhone. Under iOS7, however, Find My iPhone is no longer available. Instead, a small paragraph below the new iCloud email account setup screen says "Only your main account can use Bookmarks, Photo Stream, Documents & Data, Backup, and Find My iPhone."


Consider two cases where this is a huge problem.


1) We have a large number of company iOS devices that we need to keep track of.
2) Personally, I have an iPhone and iPad, and so does my wife. So do our kids!


In both the above cases, we created a secondary iCloud account, we'll call it "Shared_Usersxxx@icloud.com", and added it as a secondary iCloud email address on ALL our iOS devices. In the setup screen we disabled everything EXCEPT "Find My iPhone". This account has a unique password, making it possible to see the location of ANY OR ALL the devices using the Find My iPhone App, WITHOUT having to share email, contacts, calendars, etc. among all these devices.


In our company, I can tract the location of any iOS device I gave to an employee, but his personal PRIMARY iCloud account is used to keep his mail, contacts, calendars, etc. secure. He shares this data between his iPhone and iPad, but NOT with everyone else. In my family, we all have our own primary iCloud accounts. I share mine between my iPhone and iPad; my wife and kids do the same. This allows us to keep our calendars, contacts, emails, etc. separated. But we all used the secondary iCloud email account ONLY with Find My iPhone. This allowed everyone in the family to see the location of everyone else, very nice in an emergency. Unlike the Find My Friends app, the device being located doesn't have to respond to a request to be found (very important when finding a lost or stolen device).


In both the above cases, we just log into the Find My iPhone APP on ANY iOS device, using the secondary iCloud account's email address and password (the email address is actually saved in the app, so you really only need to enter the password after the initial login). Viola! You can now see the location of any device that has that secondary iCloud account installed. And a person can still be untrackable if they wish, simply by turning off the Find My iPhone feature under the shared account's iCloud account settings on their device.


Alas, with iOS7 this is no longer possible. With the Find My iPhone feature only available for use with the device's PRIMARY iCloud account, there are only two ways to track another device:


1) Use the same primary iCloud account (which forces you to share other data and features you may not want to);
2) Log into the Find My iPhone APP with the PRIMARY iCloud email address and password of the person you want to track.


Either way, the person doing the tracking MUST have access to the PRIMARY iCloud credentials of the device they are tracking. This is a large security hole! Ask yourself: if you are a parent, do you really want your kids to have access to your primary iCloud account, including your mail, contacts, calendars, etc? Some people may not want their spouse to access that. In a company setting, do you want all your employees to be FORCED to share Documents & Data, Backup and Bookmarks, just to use the Find My iPhone feature? If they want to keep their mail, contacts, calendars, etc. separated from other employees, they will be forced to move these to a secondary iCloud account, which will no longer allow them to share Bookmarks, Photo Stream, Documents & Data or Backup. Why this ridiculous limitation?


The bottom line:Find My iPhone is now only useful for the primary iCloud account holder, and can no longer be used effectively between larger numbers of iOS devices, such as families or corporate institutions. This should be addressed in the next update to the iOS.

Posted on Sep 19, 2013 6:43 AM

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31 replies
User profile for user: xboxbmliphone
xboxbmliphone
User level: Level 1
53 points

Sep 19, 2013 10:47 AM in response to JonW_HB

As a family, this was Definitely a necessary feature. Fortunately, the rest of the family will be stuck on 6.1.3, and I can still see all of those devices logging into FMI on my ip5 with the shared icloud account, but can't see where mine is(lol)... I have to think this will be addressed in future release if enough people complain and actually open feedback items and/or bug reports...I know I will...

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User profile for user: EAngel88
EAngel88
User level: Level 1
0 points

Sep 19, 2013 2:43 PM in response to UberCraig

I just posted a similar question, before seeing this. This is a HUGE problem for me, and I would not have installed the update had I known about this change. I only hope that many people were using this tracking feature and will be complaining about it, so that it can be addressed in a future update. So sorry I updated now. 😟

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User profile for user: UberCraig
UberCraig Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Sep 20, 2013 4:00 PM in response to UberCraig

Brad, and everyone else, just to clarify my original post that started this thread, and offer a workaround or two: you CAN still locate, erase etc. any iOS device using Find My iPhone in iOS7, but the device you want to track or erase must EITHER use the same PRIMARY iCloud account as you do, OR you must log into the Find My iPhone app on your phone using THEIR primary iCloud account's username and password.


For parents, that's not a big deal, maybe just an annoyance: give your kids their own individual primary iCloud accounts, but you jot down their username and password in their contact info on your phone. Log Into FMI with that and track them.


The real pain is if you as an adult want others to be able to see where you are, WITHOUT also giving them access to your other iCloud info. For then to see you, THEY must either use the same PRIMARY iCloud account as you do, or they must have your username and password to log into the FMI app...which means they cal also see all your other stuff, even if you turn off the FMI feature on your phone. Anything you share with iCloud will be visible to anyone with access to your iCloud account.


For corporate users who want to track and manage company-owned iOS devices without having all of them use the same primary iCould account, this is a big pain. For families, imagine being on a vacation, or experiencing a disaster, accident, etc, where you'd really want everyone to be able to locate each other, even if they are unable to answer their phone or otherwise respond...a very real possibility in today's world. Now not so easy without compromising privacy and security.


I have three workarounds. The first two use Find My iPhone and so require everyone to use the same PRIMARY iCloud account.


1) the simplest thing is to go to your device under Settings/iCloud and toggle off anything you don't want others to see...but if you have multiple devices of your own (say an iphone and an iPad), this prevents you from sharing with yourself. Bummer.


2) It occurred to me today that with iOS6 there was a way to lock out changes to features in Settings. Sure enough, it still works with iOS7. Enabling this feature allow everyone to share the same PRIMARY iCloud account WITHOUT sharing other things you'd like to keep private. Enabling this feature will prevent the person with the device from making any changes to the Accounts on their device (Mail, Contacts, Calendars), so you'll need to think about what features of these accounts you WANT to allow before following the steps below. ALL THE FOLLOWING STEPS ARE PERFORMED ON THE OTHER DEVICES IN YOUR FAMILY/COMPANY, not your own.


A) I suggest entering airplane mode in Settings to prevent the device you are working on from downloading any of your iCloud info during this process.


B) Next, be sure YOUR PRIMARY iCloud account is listed on the person's device that you wish to track (kid's employee, etc). Go to Settings/iCloud to check this, and if necessary sign out of their iCloud account here and sign in with your primary iCloud account.


C) Add a second iCloud account using their personal iCloud email address (the one you just deleted as the primary). Set this one to share whatever they need to (their own Mail, contacts, calendars, etc). If they weren't previously using iCloud for anything but tracking and already had their own email account set up, you can omit this step.


D) Now, decide what features of your Primary iCloud account you do NOT want this person to be able to see or use (mail, contacts, calendars, etc). On THEIR DEVICE go to Settings/iCloud, and toggle OFF any of these things, but be sure to leave anything they need to share. A common issue here will be Photos. Since Photo sharing is now ONLY supported with the primary account, I suggest leaving this on, but you can still prevent them from seeing your new photos if needed. Tap the arrow to the right of Photos, and on the next screen toggle off "My Photo Stream", but leave on "Photo Sharing" which allows them to see, create and subscribe to other shared steams, just not your primary photostream. You can instead make this same Photo setting on your device, which has the same result. Or just disable Photos altogether. Whatever setting suits you the best.


Once you have decided which features of your primary iCloud account you'll allow this person to see, BE SURE YOU HAVE ALSO TURNED ON "Find My iPhone" here.


E) Lastly, go to Settings/General/Restrictions. Tap "Enable Restrictions". Enter a new password (twice- this is NOT the same password for the device, but only for locking and unlocking restrictions, so use a new one only you will know). Scroll down to the "Allow Changes" section and tap "Accounts." Tap to place a check next to "Don't Allow Changes". Exit from Settings.


You're done! Repeat the above steps on every device in your family or company you want to track. You will now be able to track all of them at one time using Find My iPhone on your device, from your primary iCloud account, and they will also be able to see your device location, but they will not be able to see any of your information as long as you toggled it off and then locked out account changes under restrictions. Be aware that they will not be able to add, delete or change any Mail accounts unless you unlock the restrictions. But you will likely have their own separate email account on this device (step C above).


3) if this is too much for you to handle, and tracking is your primary concern, in the App Store there is a free app called "Find my Kids - Footprints" . They just released a new iOS7 version which is unrated, but the previous version was reasonable well rated. After a trial it requires an annual subscription (which removes the ads, and it is VERY cheap), but it irks me to pay for a service that I used to get for free. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems to do a bit more that the Find my iPhone app as far as tracking...but it can't lock or erase your device. You'd still need to use their primary iCloud account for that. I'm sure we'll be seeing more apps like this in the near future.


Hope this helps.

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User profile for user: Brad Hebert
Brad Hebert
User level: Level 1
0 points

Sep 20, 2013 9:59 PM in response to UberCraig

Thanks for all of the thoughts on workarounds. It's interesting that phones upgraded to iOS 7 can stay on the shared account as before. I just got a couple of new phones, so that loophole doesn't really help me.


I may go in the direction of everyone, except maybe me, on the shared primary account with the other iCould features turned off and go back to local backups. I know I could use their individual accounts and login separate;y to each, but that doesn't seem very convenient. My wife does use the shared account for email, though, and I wouln't want one of the kids accidentally getting access by flipping the on switch.

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User profile for user: fbg00
fbg00
User level: Level 1
9 points

Sep 21, 2013 5:12 AM in response to UberCraig

HELPFULL TIP: Apple does offer a free app called "find my friends" in the app store. It lets you TRACK a set of phones by mutual agreement. Families and companies can use this to track multiple phones at once. On the plus side, to track a phone all you need is the primary AppleID and consent. You don't need the person's password. But it is still not as good as before. Here are some issues:


  1. If you care about being able to lock and wipe, you still need all the primary accounts and passwords
  2. If you care about being able to lock and wipe,you need to depend on the honors system that the individual family members (employees) don't change their passwords and neglect to tell you
  3. Find my friends has an easy-to-use button to turn it off for a while. If family members shut this off for privacy, they could forget to turn it on
  4. Minor point -- but the app has ugly and old school design. Why would I even bring that up? Because Apple convinced us all to upgrade to what is essentially a newer look, at the expense of family safety and convenience. If we are in a form-over-function world, then Apple should update this app too :-)


Another thing -- if one DOES go the way of having one shared account for the family, and using iCloud to locate, lock, wipe, etc... here are some issues:

  1. If you share one account, everyone must backup phones, bookmarks, photo streams, documents and data to the same account
  2. This forces one to pay Apple lots of money for a big iCloud account. (Hm... could that have been the motive for this "downgrade"?)
  3. I am not sure, but it may mean all that data gets mixed. I am not sure I want my youngest family members to have access to every photo taken by the older family members. Do I trust an 18-year-old to never take a pic that I would not want a 13 year old to see??? How about you?
  4. Then there are questions I personnally have, that might be problems depending on the answers:
    • Can one iCloud account even hold backups for multiple phones, or will they overwrite?
    • Will the photo streams, contacts, etc all lump together into one big set, or will iCloud keep them distinct?
    • What happens with paid apps? Does everyone get everything, all the time, with no control?
    • In general do both privacy and sharing work in every case just as it did before? I think not


Thoughts?

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User profile for user: Brad Hebert
Brad Hebert
User level: Level 1
0 points

Sep 21, 2013 9:36 AM in response to fbg00

My thoughts are that I don't want to use Find My Friends as a replacement because I want the remote alert and wipe capabilities for my kids' phones. If I put them all on the shared account as primary, I'll turn off most or all of the iCloud services for them and go back to local backups, etc.


I still have a minor concern that they would be able to easily access email, etc. that is used by my wife on the primary account by changing settings, but it may not really be a big deal.


So, maybe my kids just won't have iCloud services despite the fact that I had carefully set up the needed maxtrix of accounts and had everything working fine before iOS 7.

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iOS 7 Only Allows Find My iPhone with Primary iCloud Account

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