Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

I have had an apple id problem myself, for the past N years. Mine is an old mac.com account, which has my Gmail address as the backup email (and the primary one now that mac.com isn't doing email anymore). Because of this, I cannot sign up for a new account with my Gmail (it is tied to the older mac.com account).

I've managed to reset the password, but I must answer a security question to log in. I mean, I answered those security questions probably a decade ago and I do not know what they are anymore. You can reset your security questions, but to do that you need to use an iPhone (last one I owned was a 4) that is still logged in, or, answer a security question. Which is as we established, the problem.

So every couple of months I log in, try a few other possible answers, get them wrong, and get locked out for a bit.

Anyway, I need to get this fixed my march, due to apple being the formula one streamer in my country now, so I have to actually solve the problem of logging in to my apple account. Or, I guess, making another random email just so I can watch f1. Sigh.

But if anyone knows how to reset security questions, I'd love to know. I would way rather pay apple actual money than go back to torrenting the races.

It sounds like you unfortunately have gotten yourself kinda stuck, but I very much sympathize. I too have an account dating back to iTools, and for a long time it was a major frustration that I was stuck with that original email address as unchangeable for the Apple ID, unlike newer accounts. However, some time in the last, I dunno 3-5 years maybe? I can't remember now the exact time I noticed, but after over a decade of requests and fading hope Apple actually did allow me to change the email address for that Apple ID, which I shifted to my own domain. So for anyone else who hasn't checked in a long time, worth noting situation might be marginally better now.

Re: "mac.com isn't doing email anymore", all the original mac.com email addresses still work fine. Apple has played around with various domains (mac.com/me.com/icloud.com) over their decades of bumbling with online services but they made them all interchangeable for older users, mails to the original @mac.com emails still go through. Even originally made aliases (they allowed 5 with iTools) still work. Not sure what your issue was on that one.

Finally yeah, ""security"" questions are one of those horrible legacy anti-patterns that I will cheer to see finally be dead and buried. If you try to answer them honestly probably anyone can learn it with a bit of online searching, if you go for more obscure stuff they're easy to forget defeating the purpose. It's really best just to treat them as extra passwords, use random alphanumeric values and keep them in your password manager same as the password. Apple has also fumbled around with recovery over the years, at one point you had options to have a manual recovery key you could save but I think that's dead and can't set it up after already forgetting. Maybe if you go in person to a store with physical ID and evidence, if you had payment associated with the account and have that credit card for example that might do it.

If you have nothing of value tied to the account though probably no reason not to just abandon it.

> making another random email

youremail+anystring@gmail.com will always redirect to youremail@gmail.com Before making a random email address, try using youremail+f1@gmail.com or something similar.

Also any dot in your email is ignored by gmail. a.b.c@gmail.com is equivalent to abc@gmail.com. You can try using your.email@gmail.com.

It doesn't sound like you use your old Apple account. Why don't you abandon it and use a new one?

Add and verify another primary email address.

On a device: Settings > (iCloud user) > Sign-in & Security -> (+) {{name}}@gmail.com

If that doesn't work, then use the dot trick.. y.ourname@gmail.com = yourname@gmail.com.

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