4 ms·
The "trick" unfortunately is to buy a second apple device (macbook, iphone, etc.), sign it into your iCloud account, and make sure it can be used for two-factor
by chatmasta 4y ago
The "trick" unfortunately is to buy a second apple device (macbook, iphone, etc.), sign it into your iCloud account, and make sure it can be used for two-factor authentication. Then if you lose one of your devices, you can use the other device to 2FA into your account without using a phone number.
Another, cheaper but potentially more risky option, is to use a Google Voice number as your 2FA SMS line.
If the OP's brother had either of those options in place, I'm pretty sure he could have recovered his account and removed the stolen iPhone from the list of authorized devices.
- raincom 4y agoEven for online banking, many suggest to use a google voice number for 2FA SMS, thanks to sim swap attacks. However, some banks don't allow google voice numbers.
- hx833001 4y agoIdeally, you want a separate Google Voice number as your trusted phone number and to have no unauthenticated access to that Google account from the phone. I also just checked and you actually can’t even change the trusted phone number without logging into applied.apple.com, and you can also register the numbers of trusted friends or family members as a backup to recover access. So the situation is not as concerning as the original post suggested, if you’re careful.