an error occurred during activation ipad

Honestly, if i hadn't stumbled upon this forum today, i never would have known this was even possible, mainly because it just doesn't seem plausible. No other service provider does this to my knowledge. I mean, this is not the deep web, and doo-doo happens with our accounts. I can't count the number of times i've seen emails from stray acquaintances with the one-line link to stupid crap (i'm not sure how many erection enhancers this little woman needs!), so really Apple . . . is this reason to shut down entire devices??? I have no idea what was said/done/transmitted over this stupid iPod before i even received it from their own store, but it sure didn't come from me to my 85 year old mother. I'm betting a lot of people out there are hobbled by this tactic, and hopefully we can educate them with this post. Yikes. Thanks again.

Well, it's a week later, and while i felt pretty good about this stupid problem last weekend, nothing has changed. Apple sent me a return box for a "repair" that will expire by Thursday of this coming week . . . the analyst's last words were "be patient; i'm still working with the engineers on unlocking your device." But he initiated this "repair," which was in case they'd just exchange it, or so i thought. What a complete nightmare. Thank God it was only an iPod and not something more expensive in their line. I'm done. I can't keep fighting this. I honestly don't know who to even take it to if i could fight anymore. I feel completely defeated by them . . . the thing is 5 weeks old and can't do what i bought it for. I never got it to work in the first place. Not sure how i could have inflicted nefarious activity on the world; my Apple account is up and running just fine. I honestly wonder if some unscrupulous, underpaid factory worker tinkered with this device before sending it. I just don't know what else it could be. Brand new, from the Apple store. No messaging or facetime. Unreal.

Just thought I'd add a solution that just worked for me. After switching my iphone to Freedom Mobile and getting a new sim with temporary number, and then porting my old phone number over, the imessage and facetime would not activate. I tried all advised tricks and ideas on apple support, I talked with Freedom store and they said turn off imessage/facetime for two days (seriously did not work), then contacted apple support and spent 98 minutes with an advisor and then a senior advisor who also launched a ticket with a softwear engineer. You need to confirm with apple support that your number is working in the icloud and it's all clear/working there. The temp sim card phone number was still loading and not completing the activation for over a week - with everything I tried. I was advised to call my carriers' technical support - and they just forwarded me back to apple support without my knowledge and this time another advisor told me to do a hard restart. This was new to me. Hold the Home button down simultaneously with pressing and holding the on/off button. Hold until the iphone turns off AND wait until the apple logo lights up. Then release the buttons. Tried a few more tricks of turning imessage on and off as well as facetime, and at some point it activated - but with the old temp sim card phone number, and then promptly unactivated when I tried something else. So... someone at work told me the next step and it worked: log out of the apple id on the facetime, turn off the facetime, log out of the apple id on the imessage, turn off imessage, log out of the apple id in the main phone setting. Then LOG OUT of apple id ON ALL OTHER DEVICES using the same apple id (i.e. laptop, ipad, ipod, etc.). Then go to apple and log into your apple id and change the password. Then resign in to all devices and the iphone in the reverse order as I signed out. Once it connected with the changed apple id the activation was instant with the correct phone number. Problem solved for me. Hope this helps someone else, as this has been a very frustrating experience and glad to have a resolve!!

Apple informed me that something nefarious and random was generated from my brand new iPod out to others as some sort of spam. For that, my device . . . DEVICE . . . was actually locked down. After a month of several senior analysts' work and a multitude of hoop-jumping, the engineers at Apple finally relented and unlocked my device. There really was nothing i did wrong; i'd just purchased the device and never used it. So this actually happens, Folks. This is the email i received last week, and voi la! my device is not working as it should:

Thanks for your patience! I have a response back from Engineering. The iPod touch has been unblocked on the server and you can now use iMessage or FaceTime .

Yep, it's beyond shameful how Apple has setup this kangaroo court of engineers who can invalidate your perfectly legal purchase and secretively deny you access to your device, not only without ANY legitimate process/warning, but by making it NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to reasonably correct their arbitrary actions. Their frontline customer support is either complicit or clueless (or both), placing the unreasonable onus on the customer not only to figure it out, but then try to correct it with herculean efforts, all while Apple support denies, shrugs and then (only after you catch them in their own nefarious acts) apologizes with little meaningful reparations. No person, let alone a PAYING customer, should have to go through what we went through to "fix" this, let alone be run through BS steps like resetting a perfectly fine device or changing Apple ID's or all of the other wasted time and useless steps of the internal circus that result from Apple's guilty-before-innocent locking of devices. I have yet to hear from Apple why they deemed our devices lock-worthy, but they refuse to state why (if our device was hacked or used nefariously, we should have the RIGHT to know and they should be working with us to find out WHY, rather than acting egregiously and unilaterally, but I suspect something innocuous may have "looked" suspicious to them, like simply changing Apple ID's, which makes this mess even more of an insult). Glad you made it through as well (we are the lucky few!) but I wonder if maybe your brand new device may have even been locked due to a typo, if it's brand new (and not reconditioned?). If so, then all the more shame on Apple! I guarantee that this foolishness/arrogance has already cost them sales and even more brand equity, on top of an already competitive environment, but apparently they do not care...

I might have the same problem I guess. I have been using FaceTime and iMessage on my Mac for a year but mysteriously it stopped working a month ago. My ID doesn't work on my iPhone either. Created a new ID still no luck. Wasted my time on the internet and Apple Discussions for days. Tried every **** thing on both my phone and laptop. Contacted Apple Support twice. They took all the info about the problem but never reverted back with a solution. Apple ID works fine while logging in through iCloud as u said but FaceTime and iMessage gives the same error message. After reading your post I am reassured that the Apple has locked out my devices for FaceTime and iMessage. I am so frustrated with their negligence and poor support.

But was your problem solved finally?

My problem was finally solved, but it took a month of me badgering, cajoling, calling, and emailing all sorts of senior analysts at Apple Support. Matt's right - the analysts either don't know or are forbidden to tell you that something remotely nefarious "leaked" from your device. In my case, the iPod was brand-spanking new, directly from Apple themselves. Not reconditioned, not used, not a second, but a fully personalized iPod with my name and number engraved on the back. So the big question became "how did this device send out something nefarious (spam) when it was never activated?" Given that logic, i think they finally relented and unlocked my device. The final senior analyst i worked with was able to confirm to me that the device itself had been locked . . . not my Apple ID, so changing ID's wouldn't have (and didn't) matter. If i hadn't run into Matt on this forum, i never would have known to directly state that i thought this was what happened, and demand an explanation. The 4th guy i worked with was able to confirm exactly that, stating that i'd sent some kind of spam out of my iPod to other Apple users. Then it was up to him to plead my case to the engineers. Crazy crap. If that hadn't worked after some period of time, he was instructing me to take it to the Apple store about 50 miles from my home to return it for a fully functional one. After owning your device for a year, i'm not sure you'll get that option. Agghh!! What a mess!

This is exactly the right answer!

My Mac, iPad and iPhone all returned "an error occured during activation" for iMessage and FaceTime using Apple ID. The phone worked OK using my phone number only.

I followed the support guides - time zone, software update, NVRAM reset, network settings reset, new Apple ID, password reset, log on as guest user, Safe Mode restart etc. and nothing worked.

Then I came upon this post, requested a support call for Apple ID, spoke to a great support rep in Ireland explaining the above. He checked a couple of things then escalated my case to level two support who confirmed my Apple ID was locked at the server level (he didn't mention serial numbers of devices and I didn't want to get into that).

The L2 support rep then confirmed that he would email the engineers and that this will be fixed within a couple of days (unfortunately it's the weekend in Ireland) and they will confirm back to me when I'm good to go - we shall see

All in all, 20 minutes on the phone, and for all the crap Apple takes these days I really couldn't be happier - support that is actually supportive...

Cheers

I'm happy for you On2it, but i'll be very curious to hear how long this actually takes for their remedy. I was told this exact thing not once, not twice, but about 6 times - spanning 4 weeks - before the said remedy was put in place. Each time i called, i was told it would just be a few more days for the Engineer Gods to relinquish control. Because my device was brand new, i was finally given the option to return it to an Apple store for an exchange (waiting for them caused their simple return policy to go void, so even that was going to be a fight).

Good luck - hope you stumbled onto a great senior analyst with your first shot. My case took 5.

So getting my account unblocked took one day longer than expected due to having to run a log capture app for the engineers but now it's all sorted. The support rep suggested the issue was related to spam, phishing emails, the dodgy-and-widely-advertised app MacKeeper but was not precise. During the support feedback part I suggested that if engineers are going to demand log files they could at least be explicit about what it was that triggered the security algorithm - so I avoid whatever it was. Anyway, all working now.

Excellent news!🙂

Unfortunately for others (including myself and wife who were dragged through the mud to get this far, as well as zeldajones), Apple's handling of this is a pathetic joke. You got lucky, but most get run through some circus of resets and clean erases, losing data and time (which is money) for NO GOOD REASON all b/c of some ridiculous secret kangaroo court of engineers (which refuses to even partially illuminate any actual issue(s) or provide any relevant reason to put people through this in the first place - that's an abuse of power) and clueless frontline support. Hopefully, this thread will continue to help others to be more like you and less like us when it comes to Apple's despicable policies and procedures on this not uncommon matter. Thank you for posting!

Good Idea, Sorry l couldn't be of any assistance

Now working! Sorry . . . slip of the finger! My iPod is NOW working!