Home » Uncategories » EnTech: Small number of users report Find My iPhone showing unknown devices, could be related to sold Macs

EnTech: Small number of users report Find My iPhone showing unknown devices, could be related to sold Macs

Add Comment
Friday, May 15, 2015
Small number of users report Find My iPhone showing unknown devices, could be related to sold Macs

Screen Shot 2015-05-14 at 2.56.14 PM
A bug appearing for a small number users on iCloud.com may allow them to temporarily track and make changes to Macs belonging to other users, according to reports appearing on Twitter. Users have noted that Macs with names they don’t recognize recently started appearing in the device list on the Find My iPhone web service, allowing them to remotely lock or erase the computers in some cases, or just play a sound in others.

Update: The exact nature of the problem is difficult to pin down, but a person aware of the issue says that this is likely related to users not properly erasing their Macs before transferring them to someone else. Sources have told us that following the steps on this Apple help document should fix it. That said, we’re still investigating since some users don’t seem to fall into that category, and have reached out to Apple for more information.
Some users also speculate that perhaps these are used Macs that were sold to someone else and are now pinging the wrong iCloud account. It’s certainly a possibility that this could be the source of the confusion, since Find My Mac configuration is saved on a computer even after the operating system has been reinstalled.
That theory doesn’t seem to always hold up in this case, however, since some users seeing the problem claim to have never sold their Mac to a friend.

 
    At least one user reports knowing the person whose Mac showed up on his account, so the glitch may not be entirely random. Other affected machines could be used computers or loaners (as suggested by John Siracusa above) that simply didn’t get wiped from the user’s iCloud account properly.
Several of us here at 9to5Mac have checked our own accounts and found nothing out of the ordinary. It seems likely that this is simply a case of machines that were previously linked to an iCloud account showing up again in error, and not necessarily a widespread issue allowing anyone to hijack a random stranger’s Mac.
One of the users reporting the issue above also postulates that this bug could be connected to him being in the area shown on the map yesterday, though this solution seems unlikely. In any case, if you happen to spot a strange Mac listed on your iCloud account, the best thing to do is simply leave it alone.
Some users may recall that Apple’s iTunes Connect portal suffered from a similar problem earlier this year when developers started seeing apps and login names belonging to different developers. In another case, emails sent to iCloud address were delivered to the wrong users.
Apple woes continue: Some reporting iCloud down across iOS, Mac, and web Apple woes continue: Some reporting iCloud down across iOS, Mac, and web
Apple’s iCloud servers once again experiencing major outages for a growing number of users Apple’s iCloud servers once again experiencing major outages for a growing number of users

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Gravatar WordPress.com Logo Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo
Connecting to %s

7 Responses to “Small number of users report Find My iPhone showing unknown devices, could be related to sold Macs”

  1. Robb Shecter (@dogweather) says: I’m the person who sees “Manuello” in my Find My iPhone app. To help debug this, here’s what I know:
    * I haven’t sold or gotten rid of a device.
    * I hadn’t been on foot in Manuello’s neighborhood for 3 years … until yesterday when I was skateboarding there.
    * Today I can’t find my iPhone, which is why I started up the app in the first place…
    Liked by 1 person
    • Mike Beasley says: Very strange. Unfortunately these types of bugs seem to be par for the course these days with Apple.
      Like
      • Robb Shecter (@dogweather) says: Update: I found my phone, in my car in its underground parking garage. So the only nexus remaining is that I was in Manuello’s neighborhood yesterday.
        Like
  2. rlo (@rpez21) says: This has happened to me, but I figured I just didn’t de-register my device from my apple id properly. But lo and behold, I had. I also reinstalled the OS prior to selling the MBA to a buddy of mine, but the existence in Find My iPhone persists. He’s tried cleariing things on his end (not sure what), but the result is just ” Macbook (2)”, and then “(3),” etc. Huh. Go figure, especially since I’ve sold other devices and wiped them similarly but none of them have turned up.
    Like
  3. nana (@purplemaize) says: I am glad I change my hard drives before I sell my computers people
    Like
  4. ehku says: This happened to me with my recently sold MacBook Air (but the device is marked “disconnected”). Before selling I didn’t reinstall the OS but instead, I created an admin user and then deleted my admin account.
    Like
  5. Josh Cooper (@joshua_r_cooper) says: This happened to me as well. I smoked the hard drive and reinstalled the current OS X at the time before i sold my old MBP.
    Like

0 Response to "EnTech: Small number of users report Find My iPhone showing unknown devices, could be related to sold Macs"

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)