Students use school-owned devices by the hundreds of millions worldwide. And every district—sometimes every school—has a different policy about the way in which an associated account is set up, whether it’s an Apple ID, a Google account, or an Amazon login. For Apple IDs, an appropriate level of security may accidentally restrict students’ access to some of their data until school—or perhaps some minor amount of normalcy—resumes.
The scenario one student wrote Mac 911 about involves two-factor authentication (2FA). Their school issues iPads, which had to be returned before schools were shut down. The iPads synced with iCloud, and students do have access to the Apple ID account and password that is used with each iPad. However, this scholar’s school or district IT department enabled 2FA, which is normally an excellent idea for account security.
