Unknown email appears on iCloud restore (ios 7, iPhone 5)

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43 points

Unknown email appears on iCloud restore (ios 7, iPhone 5)

I recently had an iPhone 5 that I reset and restored from an iCloud backup which is tied to my apple ID. Upon restoring the phone I was immediately asked for my iCloud user ID and password but it was prefilled with an unknown e-mail address (a gmail address that does not belong to me). I cleared out the bad address and put in my own info, which seemed to work, but I keep getting prompted for the other address. I discovered that upon restoring my phone, the restore had put most of my apps back, but some of them were stuck on "waiting". I believe these apps were trying to use the other iCloud/AppleID account which uses the unknown gmail address. I don't use gmail on my iCloud or apple accounts, and don't know why or how this appeared on my device. I'm concerned as to how this could have happened. I've been using iCloud paid 20GB for backups on several of my apple devices and have never had this happen before. Has anyone else experienced this before?

iPhone 5, iOS 7

Posted on Sep 24, 2013 7:37 AM

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Answer 1

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qaisqm

Level 1

5 points

Oct 11, 2013 7:19 PM in response to joechurch

Hi joechurch, hope this helps!! I was seeing the exact same issue when I tried restoring my latest iCloud backup to a new iPhone. After some digging, mphil513 was actually correct with the suggestion that it might be purchased content transfered to the phone manually through iTunes. I understand you mentioned the way you get music will not cause issues for you, but it's worth a shot.

What I did was go to my song library from iTunes. Right-click any of the column titles, and select "Purchase Date". I then sorted by Purchase Date, and lo and behold, I had one song and one album which listed a purchase date. I import all my music files into iTunes since they are... purchased... outside iTunes. Right-click the songs, Get Info, and I saw two Apple ID's which matched the two Apple ID's I was prompted for in the restore.

Looks like Apple remembers which content is "purchased" when your device is being backed up. So when doing a restore, Apple tries to re-download that content directly from the Apple Store. When we cancel the prompt, the phone says "Some items could not be downloaded. If they are on your computer, you can restore them by syncing with iTunes" which is exactly what I do anyway!

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Answer 2

Sep 28, 2017 7:38 AM in response to joechurch

This is very sad. This was posted in 2013 and now it's 2017, and i have the same problem. I restored my iphone, and I cant use it because it keeps rotating 4 email addresses saying i have purchases from those, which is ridiculous and not true. I never used those apple IDs.

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Answer 3

joechurch Author

Level 1

43 points

Sep 24, 2013 9:13 AM in response to randers4

No, all of my devices only and ever share one AppleID/iCloud account. I have never seen this gmail address before and have no idea how it ended up on my phone. No one else has ever synched with my iTunes library or transferred apps. Here is something else that is strange. I signed into iCloud using my AppleID which then showed me a list of the restore points to choose. Once I picked the restore point that I wanted, thats when I got the first prompt for this foreign gmail ID. I couldn't change the ID in the prompt so I cancelled it. The restore continued anyway, put back all my settings, wallpaper and apps, but still prompted again for the foreign gmail ID. I was able to change the ID in the prompt once the restore was complete, so I can put in my correct AppleID and password and that seems to work. But then hours later I get the same prompt again. I suspect something is going on with my iCloud account, since I got the prompt for this other ID before the restore ever started. I don't see anything else unusual about my iCloud account, all my devices are there, backups are there, it all looks okay until I did that restore on the iPhone 5.

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Answer 4

joechurch Author

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43 points

Sep 24, 2013 1:37 PM in response to randers4

I thought about that, and if it becomes too much of a problem I may give it a shot. But iCloud will purge the old backups soon as new ones are generated. I know I could also start over from scratch, but thats less than idea since there are hundreds of apps and mms history that I don't wish to lose. I just want to know how someone elses AppleID got associated with one of my iCloud backups. Thats what boggles my mind and concerns me.

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Answer 5

randers4

Level 9

63,525 points

Sep 24, 2013 9:08 AM in response to joechurch

Did you ever install any apps or other media on your other phone that were purchaed with this Gmail ID? Or is it possible that someone else synced with your iTunes library and transferred apps or media purchased with this ID to your library, which were subsequently synced to your phone when you synced it (and where then included in your backup)? If so, that would cause this type of behavior.

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Answer 6

randers4

Level 9

63,525 points

Sep 24, 2013 9:16 AM in response to joechurch

You might try restoring the phone, which will wipe it, then restoring one of the other backups. Otherwise you may spend a long time trying to troubleshoot this. If you have data on your phone now that is not contained in the other backup choices, you may be able to save it to your computer before doing so (depends on the type of data).

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Answer 7

randers4

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63,525 points

Sep 24, 2013 1:45 PM in response to joechurch

Apple states that it keeps your last 3 backups. But to avoid overwriting any existing backups, before restoring back up to your computer using iTunes instead. You can do this by connecting by going to the Summary tab of your iTunes sync settings and clicking Back Up Now. Also go to File>Devices>Transfer purchases to transfer your apps and other media to your iTunes library. (Before doing this, you can prevent your existing iTunes backup from being overwritten (if you have one) by going to iTunes Preferences>Devices, locating your most recent backup on the Backups list, then control-click on it and choose Archive.)

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Answer 8

joechurch Author

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43 points

Sep 24, 2013 2:25 PM in response to randers4

I'm an IT engineer, the options for local restores and working around this issue are not really what I'm looking for help with. Its really to determine how someone elses AppleID got associated wtih my iCloud backups. Thats the only symptom so far.

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Answer 9

randers4

Level 9

63,525 points

Sep 24, 2013 2:31 PM in response to joechurch

I understand. I can't explain it. You would probably have to call Apple support and ask them.

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Answer 10

Oct 1, 2013 12:30 PM in response to joechurch

I also have this problem.

I don't know if it's been sorted yet for you.

I did a back up of my iPhone 4S to restore my new 5S to.

However when choosing the back up to restore to, mine came up with two random emails that I don't recognise even in the slightest.

I tried resetting the phone and tryed again (which was brand new and sealed in the box) but this didn't help.

I then contacted Apple Support who are still looking in to the issue for me.

I also reset my 4S and restored to the same back up and low and behold, these two random email addresses came up on there.

I have no news from Apple yet, but when I set up the phone as a new iPhone and added my iCloud account afterwards, they didn't pop up.

My 4S has been restored to the oldest back up I had available and they are not on there...

I will post as soon as I have had a response from Apple as it seems there are a few people having similar issues!

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Answer 11

joechurch Author

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43 points

Oct 1, 2013 1:17 PM in response to madcow_87

madcow_87, yes thats the exact same behavior that I saw. I couldn't call apple becuase my 4s wasn't under warranty anymore. The 5s is covered under square trade, not applecare, so I was out of luck. Which ***** since I think the issue is with iCloud service, not the device itself. Good luck figuring this out! I hope they can fix whatever is wrong so it doesn't happen to other people.

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Answer 12

joechurch Author

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43 points

Oct 1, 2013 1:39 PM in response to joechurch

Correction, I meant my iphone 5 is under a square trade warranty, not applecare. In any case, tech support is expired.

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Answer 13

Oct 2, 2013 7:17 AM in response to joechurch

It's very strange, the person I spoke to had never heard of the issue before and has escalated it to the engineers. Hopefully they will have an answer soon!

These are the email addresses I had come up:

ciaranjo*** @gmail.com

and

k*** @van-nieuwenhuizen.nl

It definitely seems to be an issue with iCloud but when I checked on appleid.apple.com, my usual email was the only one associated. confused.com

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Answer 14

joechurch Author

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43 points

Oct 2, 2013 7:17 AM in response to madcow_87

I tried emailing that address asking if they had any issues with their devices (assuming they use iCloud) but I never got a reply.

Its almost like Apple has some sort of issue where icloud backups are having the associated appleID merged with other random accounts. This seems to be a serious security issue in my opinion. It would be nice to get an official update from Apple on the problem. It can't just be you and me who are having this problem.

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Answer 15

mphil513

Level 1

0 points

Oct 7, 2013 10:10 PM in response to joechurch

i read in another post that it happens because of music that you may have download off the internet that someone else originally purchased. it happened to my 4s as well and i believe that may be the correct answer.

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