[Ask dotTechies, iOS] New Security Information Required on iDevices

There is something that has come up recently on my iPhone that I couldn’t find a whole lot of information on except for a few other sites. Apparently Apple is beefing up their security measures to ensure that your Apple ID is safe and will not be broken into by someone unauthorized. This goes beyond what you have set up in the iTunes software on your computer and even accessing  your Apple ID on apple’s site (http://appleid.apple.com).

When you try to download something from your iDevice’s iTunes app (I’m assuming it is on all Apple devices), you get a message that states “Security Info Required.” You are then taken into the iTunes app and you are to provide three different and unique security questions and type in the answer for each as well as provide a separate email address other than your Apple ID. When this first popped up on me yesterday, I thought it was some sort of phishing attempt to access my personal Apple ID information.

I could not find anything official from Apple which really bothers me a great deal, but I was able to find a couple of blogs with the same problem that I am facing. One site stated that they weren’t sure if this was real or not, and the other one stated that they were able to confirm that this is “indeed legit.” This whole thing was announced on April 12, 2012, but this didn’t start happening to me until about April 20th. I at least had the apps I needed to test until I had no choice and do this security measure on my iPhone for today’s post.

I was wondering if any others have seen this pop up on their iPhone, iPod Touches or iPads especially since I have been doing the iOS Discoveries of the Day and downloading like crazy (again). I’m hoping someone else saw the same problem and tried to download something and saw that message. If I had thought about it I could have done a screenshot of the message and question page, but I will provide the link on the article I read about this which also included both images you will see on the device.

Here’s the article: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/apple-prompting-users-for-security-questions-to-bolster-apple-id-security.ars

When I was about to publish this, I thought about changing my password on my Apple ID account. When I went there, I noticed that after I logged in to my account I was asked two of my three security questions I set up on my iPhone. Also I needed to verify the rescue email address I provided so that it can be used to have you recover your account through a different email address other than your Apple ID. So after feeling disturbed that this happened, I feel a little better that they have added an extra layer of security for your Apple ID account, but I still am not at all pleased that Apple didn’t let the general public know they were doing this.

What are your thoughts about this new security practice that Apple is doing?

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