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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

It's possible to unlock an iPhone's passcode protection with its iCloud account, if the iPhone user has allowed that.

Edit: I think I'm wrong and misremembering.

This is not true. Under no case can Apple unlock an iPhone's passcode protection with the iCloud account, unless Apple is hiding something major. More likely, the iPhone was backed up to iCloud, and Apple granted access to the iCloud backup, which would probably be essentially identical to the contents of the iPhone itself.

Any idea how to disable this?

Edit: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306:

> Unless you made a backup before you forgot your passcode, there isn't a way to save your device's data. You'll need to erase your device, which deletes all of your data and settings.

Looks like the deceased had an iCloud backup of his iPhone, potentially unencrypted (i.e. without a password - Apple obviously encrypts this on their end). More in the iCloud security model: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

Edit 2: You can turn off iCloud backup altogether to avoid this (on an iPhone: Apple ID -> iCloud -> iCloud Backup -> Off).

If I recall you cannot, I think Apple has the keys to your iCloud account so its always available for unlock (iCloud not the phone itself) this is how they provide access to authorities when they have a warrant. This was the case a few years ago, it might have changed since.

To be clear, they provide access to the phone backup, but not the phone itself.

In most cases though, a phone backup is an identical substitute for the phone itself.

I believe this is the case for unencrypted iCloud backups. If you put a password on your iCloud backup, I'm not sure they can do that (as then it becomes E_iCloud(E_yourPwd(backup)) - doesn't look like they could do much more here than recover the user-encrypted backup).

Anyone care to confirm?

I think you might be conflating macOS and iOS. When you enable FileVault (macOS full-disk encryption), you are given the option to upload a recovery key to Apple tied to your iCloud account. To my knowledge this is not offered with iOS.

what setting is that under?

Ditto, I need to make sure it’s off...

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