I WANT TO TURN OFF TWO FACTOR VERIFICATION!!!!! It is a total pain in the butt and I want the option to turn it off. Help!!!!! How can apple not allow us to turn this time-suck feature off? I want to register my frustration.

If your icloud storage is full, the only way to stop the nags is to delete material in icloud. Just as Windows or MacOS will constantly nag you if your hard drive is full, Apple’s cloud system nags you constantly until you you either subscribe for more space, or reduce the amount of material you have stored in iCloud.

When your icloud storage is full or very nearly so you risk getting corrupted backups, not receiving icloud email, missing messages, having documents corrupted, etc.

And your AppleID and Apple 2 factor authentication for your AppleID actually have nothing to do with the material on your device itself. It is entirely about what you have stored online with Apple’s various cloud based service offerings - that material is stored in Apple’s online systems, not your device.

No enrollment confirmation email of any kind. Just turned it on by accident. I’m an adult & I'm tired of Apple deciding stuff for me. I don’t need it. Don’t want it and never would have done it if I didn’t think I could cancel it. 😡

Free to opt out?

Not an option I’m afraid.

Tell Apple how you feel.

Apple does not accept feedback here. None of us volunteers have any influence over Apple policy.

apple.com/feedback is your path to speaking out.

This has been explained over and over.

It would behoove Apple not to hang up when I’m trying to get **** set up on a product I just purchased from them the two factor authentication is trash, I can’t message with my number because I can’t set it up due to the two factor authentication

Agro8811 wrote:

It would behoove Apple not to hang up when I’m trying to get **** set up on a product I just purchased from them the two factor authentication is trash, I can’t message with my number because I can’t set it up due to the two factor authentication

It would have behooved you to have properly set up your trusted devices and numbers so that, in the event one was disabled, you would have had options.

I totally feel your frustration. I am locked out of my account(that I've had for 3 years) because a tech person at my job added my work phone number, which removed my home number, on my account. I didn't know until a week ago because I had to log out and noticed the verification code kept being sent to another number. Sadly I don't have that work number anymore and only used it for a few days(so I don't even remember what it was).

I called Apple and because of the two factor verification, I will never be able to get into that account again and Apple is not able to "unlock it" for me either. They are also not able to close the account, which will continue to have all my personal information(credit card, address dob and etc).

I am BEYOND ****** about this and I really don't think it's acceptable for them to not have anything on their end to help us recover our accounts OR that we don't have the option to choose anymore. Things happen and my case a really bad thing happened and now I can't do anything.

Apple needs to figure this out and change it because I really am not ok with continuing to use their phones if they don't even give their clients the option to choose.

koriandr129 wrote:

I totally feel your frustration. I am locked out of my account(that I've had for 3 years) because a tech person at my job added my work phone number, which removed my home number, on my account. I didn't know until a week ago because I had to log out and noticed the verification code kept being sent to another number. Sadly I don't have that work number anymore and only used it for a few days(so I don't even remember what it was).

Never give anyone else access to your personal Apple ID. Never store personal information on a work Apple ID.

AppleIDs are personal account identifiers. Why you would ever give the password to that out to anyone, let alone some tech at your place of work, is beyond me.

You willingly allowed someone to alter your personal data associated with your AppleID. That has consequences.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

Never give anyone else access to your personal Apple ID. Never store personal information on a work Apple ID.

Seems like this goes against the common advice I've been reading here, which is to enter in a friend or family member's phone number as an alternate trusted device. This seems like a horrible way to keep things secure, given that you don't know how careful other people (even trusted people) are with their own security. There was recently a paper published from Princeton security researchers that demonstrated how easy it is to hijack someone else's phone number in the US. I would love to enable 2FA on my account for improved security, but I'm extremely uncomfortable with the fact that I have no reasonable backup access that's purely in my control (e.g. how google lets you print out a page of backup keys).

I know I can designate my mac as a trusted device, but that seems extremely shaky given that it's based on saving browser cookies when I access iCloud.com. As far as I can tell, the only way to have a backup 2FA method that's completely in my control is to buy a backup iphone.

My day job is cloud security, and as far as I can tell, Apple's story on iCloud 2FA is a combination of really strong security with very little attention paid to how it can practically be used in a safe and secure manner.

For this reason, I prefer to turn it off, and I think everyone should have that choice. That is what all the outrage in this thread is about. People didn't know what they were getting themselves into, because there are places in the iPhone/iCloud user interface which tell you it's required (e.g. if you want to sync iMessages to iCloud), and they don't tell you the consequences of turning it on. I myself am quite security conscious, so when I was told I needed to turn it on to sync iMessages, I thought "well of course 2FA is an improvement" and went ahead. However, when I realized this effectively blocks my ability to ever use Find My iPhone (I don't have another trusted phone number and my mac browser cookies are not reliable as a backup for something so critical), I decided that was a step too far and decided to go back to normal password auth for iCloud. It was quite a shock to learn that that's impossible. I did get lucky and change my mind before 14 days was up, but the restriction is just silly. If I hadn't made the 14 day cutoff, I would have just created a whole new iCloud account and taken the hassle of transferring everything over to it, so what's the point of forcing me to do that?

However, when I realized this effectively blocks my ability to ever use Find My iPhone (I don't have another trusted phone number

Incorrect realization.

Signing in to iCloud.com/find will allow access to FMIP without a verification code.

nt9404 wrote:

Seems like this goes against the common advice I've been reading here, which is to enter in a friend or family member's phone number as an alternate trusted device.

If you do that, they will only have the second factor. Without your Apple ID or passcode, they won't have access to your account. There's no security breach.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

If you do that, they will only have the second factor. Without your Apple ID or passcode, they won't have access to your account. There's no security breach.

If there's no security breach, why did you chastise koriandr129 for "giving someone else access to your AppleID" when all they did was add a second trusted number?

Signing in to iCloud.com/find will allow access to FMIP without a verification code.

This is really good to know but doesn't seem to be evident from going to iCloud.com. How is a user intended to find this information? I certainly didn't see any "don't have access to your device?" option when I logged into iCloud while 2FA was enabled. I'd test this out, but I've disabled 2FA via the settings rollback link.

Good luck getting people to stop expressing their opinions.

Again... expressing your opinion is absolutely fine.

Stop expecting Apple to act on them here.

Forgive us for trying to help the TLDR crowd express those opinions where they may get some action.

What were we thinking?

Forgive us for trying to help the TLDR crowd express those opinions where they may get some action.

Frankly, the "TLDR crowd" probably feels like you're being really hostile about this. I sure do.

I get that you're tired of hearing that people hate this feature, and it's answered correctly in the pinned message, but look at it from someone else's perspective. The pinned answer is a year old, so it's natural to start reading the thread and see how the conversation has gone, and then you are hit in the face with abject hostility to anyone who wants to turn 2FA off. This might compel you to offer your reasonable opinion, as I did. And I got the same hostility. Sorry to have bothered you?