forgot keychain password and cannot access my account

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ita trigoso Author

Level 1

0 points

forgot keychain password and cannot access my account

iMac 24-inch, Early 2008

OS X version 10.9.4

processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core Duo

my kids changed my account's password twice.

the first time, following procedures found on the internet, I was able to access my account and everything returned to normal: was able to access my files, mail, calendar, etc., and was able to access the internet and iCloud as before. the little devils changed it a second time and now every app related with the internet is inaccessible from my own account. for each one of them i am asked to type the keychain password - which I do not know - and given two alternatives: password or cancel. cancel does´t rte ally work because it immediately asked the same question.

feel almost crazy, with a lot of work to do and send by email and unable to do it.

please HELP!!!

Posted on Jul 10, 2014 11:46 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Jul 10, 2014 4:20 PM in response to ita trigoso

The normal keychain password is the one you originally used. Once you sort things out, invoke Parental Controls and change their accounts to standard ones. That should prevent them from hacking your machine. Alternatively, revoke their computer privileges. You're the parent.

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), SL & ML, G4 450 MP w/Leopard, 9.2.2

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Answer 2

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Jul 11, 2014 5:00 AM in response to ita trigoso

If your keychain password was the same as your account password (which is the default), when they changed your account password, this automatically changed your keychain password as well. When you reset your account password, however, this did not reset your keychain password. The keychain is a secure (ie, encrypted) repository, and as such, there is no way to reset its password. If you don't know the password, you cannot open it. If your kids don't remember the first password they used, the keychain is essentially trash... it cannot be accessed without that password.

To prevent this problem in the future, you should not allow your kids to use your account. Create one or more user accounts for your kids to use, and make sure those accounts do not have admin privileges. As baltwo points out, Parental Controls can further lock down what they're allowed to do on those accounts.

As for recovering, if you have backups, you should be able to restore the old keychain file, which is still encrypted with the original password. If you don't have backups, you'll simply have to try to reset the passwords on any online accounts that you don't know the password to.

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