I'm having a difficult time with this, maybe I'm too old, I don't know. At some point Apple enabled or forced me to enable 2-factor auth on my apple account (probably when I got an iphone?). The problem is, my phone was lost or stolen (I accidentally left it on the bed rail of my truck when I went for a mountain bike ride and it was gone when I got back).

Apple says I should change my password. But I can't, because it won't let me log in without having access to my phone (I can use "find my iphone" but it shows the device as "offline" and no last location).

I can't log in to icloud to see when the last backup was.

I've seen a couple references to a "recovery code" and I have written down something that might be it, but there's no place to type it in. Maybe I never set one up so it doesn't give me the option?

I found some way to ask to recover the account, and it required me to type in the credit card number associated with the account (fine), but when it was finished it told me I'm on a 24h delay, and then they'll let me know if they'll allow me change the phone number on the account. I don't want to change the phone number, I just want to log in and see what's there, and be able to log in when a new phone comes, which will have the same phone number (once the new sim shows up).

Have dealt with apple id issues and I am so so sorry

I hadn't used my old hotmail email address in years and I rage quit XBox Live when some jerk wouldn't refund me purchases my son made on Live years ago. When I decided to turn it back on I couldn't get into the email address or the Live account because of some weird issue. It probably took between 2-3 hours on the phone for a really diligent customer service rep to get it working. He really put in the work.

I imagine that you've fixed your issue by now. I figured you could just go into the Apple Store like I've heard so many other people have had to due to fix the most mundane issues.

Apple was no help. If your phone gets lost or stolen and it's your only "trusted device" (so, unless you own multiple apple products and are signed into icloud on such products), you are completely locked out of your account. They say they have an "account recovery" process that's automated and takes 3 days to get access to your account (if you remember the password and have access to the credit card on the account). I did know the password, have the credit card, went through the process, and they never got back to me within the 3 days (or even still to this day). The only way I was able to recover my account was:

1. order new sim card from carrier (visible)
2. order new phone from apple
3. when new phone came, I was still unable to sign in because it asks you to sign in before the sim card is activated on the phone
4. put sim card in my wife's phone so I could get a text message with an authorization code
5. sign in, wait for auth code on wife's phone, finish setup process
6. put sim card into new phone

So I still had to have access to 2 iphones to get my account back.

I chatted with apple support and they were completely worthless. They essentially explained that all this ^^^^^ was policy and there was nothing they could do. I even chatted with them after in order to find out if there was some way I could prevent this from happening in the future (if my phone was stolen again or lost). Their only suggestion was to buy another apple device and make it "trusted."

Oh wait, they did suggest something else: add someone else's phone number as a "trusted number" under my apple account. However, there are drawbacks to this. First, you can't use your own home phone because the phone must accept text messages. The rep told me that the option I chose when I first signed up with my apple account, with my mobile number (text or voice) was the choice I was stuck with for life, and it applies to all "trusted" phone numbers on the account. That means that you can't use your mobile (with text messages) as primary and your home phone (with voice calls) as secondary. Unless you chose voice to begin with (of course, they didn't tell me this limitation back when I made the choice).

They suggested putting a friend's number as the second "trusted" phone number, but after doing some research it is clear that with just access to the trusted number and knowing my email address, the account could be taken over. Not willing to risk that.

What I did was sign into my icloud account on one of our "family" ipads. Previously I was signed in to my apple account on the app store only, not the entire tablet. Now it's another "trusted" device. It sucks, because if someone else is using it, and I try to log in somewhere, they get prompted with my location and ability to deny me access (this also pops up on the phone). It also means that since it's "shared" and they know the passcode, the shared passcode can be used to "recover" (err.... take over) the account.

The whole situation sucks and apple sucks. I'm hoping next time I get a new phone there will be some viable linux option.

Oh yeah, and the iphone 11 sucks. I thought the iphone 7 was big! This thing is HUGE. And heavy. I'm actually going to return it and just use my wife's old iphone 7 (the battery is crapped out, I'll have to take it somewhere for a battery replacement). Maybe some day they'll come out with another SE.