i never set a backup password but it says that i did so i cant do my backups and I NEED THEM!

You totally saved me! I was trying to back up a broken phone so I could send it back to Verizon (just got the replacement phone in the mail and they need the defective one back). I don't recall setting a password and tried everything I can think of, but no dice (nothing saved to keychain for it, either). Reset all settings, plugged the phone back in and it is no longer is set to encrypt! 😀 I'm so relieved. Thank you!

Likewise I have automatic encrypted backup and I don't remember to have ever had to enter a password and there is nothing in my keychain so this might be a bug.

I normally write carefully all my passwords.

Even if I had chosen a password, iTunes should ask it from me EACH TIME it uses it or take it from my keychain. Just like for mounting an encrypted disk image on a Mac. There is nothing in my keychain. In my keychain I can only see iPhone wifi passwords.

Fortunately, I still have the iPhone which had been backed up. I have deleted the unknown password encrypted backup and, as explained above (Settings, General, Reset, Reset All Settings) I have unchecked encryption, backup up again, with a new password and asked for it to be saved in my keychain.

It is now cleanly saved in Keychain with the name iOS Backup and it is the only one with that name.

So there was a bug but is has been repaired.

iPhone-iTunes users should be warned of the problem so they can recreate a backup just as I did, before they really need it if their iPhone dies.

I was lucky that only the telephone SIM card part of my iPhone died!

lawrence , im sorry to tell you this but , get a real job .... i do work with computer and specially electronics for LONG years ... and i have done not tausands but hundreds of backup from iphone to itunes and itunes to iphone back again .....

MY yphone had issues has was replaced by apple .... meanwhile they gave me a phone while mine was not sent to my place ... so added my old backup to this (lent phone) and i'v ebeen using this 4 weeks , today my new iphone arrived ... so i grabed the iphone apple let me use while mine was fixing and i BACKUP it without any encrypt at all .. nothing selected , anything !!!!|!!!! so if no option are pressed and only choose regular backup ... once backup was saved to pc i turned on my new phone and tryed to backup it up ...and NOW ITS ASKING FOR A ******* PASSWORD I NEVER USED .... SO YES ITS A ******* BUG FROM THIS COMPANY .... AND MADE ME LOST A ENTIRE MONTH OF MANY IMPORTANT THINGS .... AND NOW I ASK YOU THIS .... WHO'S GOING TO GIVE MY ******* BAKCUPS AGAIN ???? ... sorry the capital letters but i think they show completely how ******* insane im with apple right now , bunch of nonsense coders and shity administration .... for god sake steve jobs wake up from your grave and remove all does shitheads from your company ....

its really sad how apple goes lately ... one things if for sure ,.. someone who buy all from apple , i won't buy anymore any devices from such a idiotic and non people careless company .. for sure i want you apple to go **** yourself and bring with you all the **** coders that works for you for making such bad software bugs ,,,,

******* disapointed and sad with apple management and excuses all the time ... no apple is perfect ... A PeRFECT ****

and sorry the english i'm not even english ......

no , im right and i can just prof it right now .... this is a BUG from itunes or neither IOS ..

we work with apple in repair part so ..i grabed a phone NEW phone ... install a few ***** and created a new apple id .. after that i changed my apple id password to something diferent ... then made a backup of the phone with only the OPTION backup ( NOT TICKED THE OPTION TO ENCRYPT ) ok , reseted phone .... now trying to restore ........ ASKING FOR PASSWORD AGAIN ...... ok ... i insert ID apple password (last password) ...not work .... using first apple id password ....its now passing files ......

so im wrong ? are you kidding me ? your bad luck is that i manage to have as many phones i need to carry on this test and prof it .... so don't try to be a smart *** saying someone wrong when WE know there is a fault on apple system of ITUNES OR IOS .. grow up more and start to accept when you dont know all !!

and finally ,, took me a few hours but managed to remember my first apple id password , and that allowed me to recover my backup of my fone ..... unlucky are does who can't remember the password and get ****** due to a problem that is not they fault ...

and finally well i can say as well there can be people who put passwords on it and then they don't even remember , im speaking for myself !!

This is an actual bug as I've just encountered it myself. The encrypt box was checked by default and never asks for a password. You can't disregard every bug as a user issue. Apple is not perfect and makes mistakes all the time. I've found myself on this page and many others hoping to resolve the issue and came across your comments that basically call everyone crazy. We're not, this is an issue and a valid one. You don't have to respond to people condescendingly assuming you know all. I've never posted on this site before but felt this was needed for all the people who continue to run into this issue. It looks like the issue is that you can enter iTunes and that box is already checked. In this case, it will not ask for a password. I used my work MacBook and this is the first time I hooked my phone up to this laptop so no password has ever been set as this was my first and only backup.

"The ONLY way a backup password can be set is if a human being sets it". I'm not a software geek but been around enough to know software can screw up in more ways than people can think of. It could be a bug requesting a password whether a password is required or not, and a error checking filter that prevents entry of an empty string. It could be an incorrectly set flag that identifies some unencrypted files as encrypted. It could be bug in the backup user interface that encrypts all backups no matter what and pulls a password from some user password history file. It could be a lot of things.

I just backed up the same phone on two different installations of iTunes last week, did not set it to encrypted, and was not prompted for a password either time. I have a new phone replacement for an old phone and can't restore the backup. I'm stuck it seems unless I pay money for some hacking routine which probably won't work because there is no password. I suspect the Apple restore routine was written with the assumption all backups are encrypted and will not allow the restoration of non-encrypted backup, at least in some cases.

Once a backup is encrypted it is always encrypted. So the encrypted backup from any previous phone is still encrypted. And it will be encrypted even if a new backup is made to a different computer.

Some human made an encrypted backup on either the old phone, or a phone that was older than that one. That backup needs the passcode to restore it. The passcode is one that whoever made the encrypted backup knew, and Apple's software did not know. Everyone who figured out the password discovered it was one that they had used in the past. And, while software can screw up, it can't encrypt a file using a password it doesn't know.

So the bottom line is that you or someone else made an encrypted backup of an older phone using a password that you or they knew and that Apple's software did not know. Thus, even if Apple screwed up badly, it could not have used a password that you knew.

Thanks. Are you saying that if someone had previously made a backup of this iPhone, and encrypted it, that when I made a backup the decision to encrypt was already made and already had a password associated with it from the phone's point of view? Is that the reason I was not prompted to create a password because the phone already had a previously selected password associated with backups? The two iTune platforms I used to back it up both indicated this iPhone had not been backed up before. I was shocked by the hundreds, if not thousands of postings I have seen on this subject. This goes beyond people not remembering passwords in my humble opinion.

Unfortunately the old phone was exchanged at Apple for the new one. I think your explanation clears up the confusion for me and maybe for a lot of others. If one backed up their phone a year ago, then backed it up more recently and wasn't prompted for a password, the first thought is "I never entered a password when I backed up so why do I need to enter one to restore". I am helping the iPhone owner here so I can ask her to go through all her old password possibilities and maybe we'll get lucky.

Guess what? I am with you 100%. Held captive by Apple yet once again. Ugh... it's true. And all the new phones and computers are not like they once were. I have ten year old imacs that run perfectly fine, yet my one year old iphone or my two year old macbook air SUCK. I am so frustrated but again.... thanks apple for another smack in the face. I am on my new macbook pro.... never used itunes... as a matter of fact, i just opened it today for the first time to back up my iphone. The stupid box is checked and I need to backup my crap iphone, but of course, I do not have the "password".... such BS! I never opened itunes before so how could i have created a password "twice." I recently backed up my iphone to my husband's desktop under my user. Never ever done it before or been in the itunes app. I backed up three times to be sure i did it right. then wiped phone. tried to restore and it wanted the %^$^%#% password, which, of course, I do not have. I didn't see that box checked, and even if I did, I would not be able to uncheck it because i never made any such passWORDS. So I lost everything! It's still in there but i cannot get it out. It's definitely a bug. A friend told me that if I call apple and tell them what happened they will ask me a ton of security questions and they will assist with restoring the backup. I wonder if that's true. I may try to call tomorrow. wish me luck, like maybe it will start to rain in ****, huh?

bs you can say it as many times as you want. . sorry you are W R O N G. It's not human error. The computer is brand new. I guess someone broke into my house, unpacked my mac, checked the box, made two passwords and packed it all back up again. Amazing.

Apple can’t possibly help you. Apple does not know the password you chose. The only place it exists is the encryption key for the backup and in your phone.

If you read the thread you posted to you with Lal see how others have resolved this.

You obviously did not bother to read the thread you posted to. When you made the backup to that pristine new Mac your phone knew to encrypt the backup because it had been encrypted on the old, dingy computer that you had previously backed it up to.

But you backed up to an old computer. If anyone could bypass backup encryption by simply backing up to a different computer that means that encrypted backup would be useless and it might as well be eliminated as an option. The phone “knows” that backups should be encrypted, and it remembers that forever. So any new backup will always be encrypted regardless of the device backed up to.

I have been reading everywhere about this for the past day.

I have an iphone 6S that has NEVER been backed up since day 1 I got it (3 years or so); came from apple store so it is not a second hand phone.

I just recently reformatted my macbook so I thought I would back up now that I want to change my phone.

The encryption is turned on with a password (that I don't know came from where).

Now I cannot back up my phone as there are "errors occurred"... Can someone help please?