Apple Drops Recovery Key From Two-Factor Authentication In New OS Versions

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 8, 2015 @11:29PM from the talking-to-people dept.

eggboard writes: If you've ever turned on what's now called "two-step verification" for an Apple ID, you had to create a Recovery Key. Lose this 14-digit code and have your password reset (because of hacking attempts against you), and you might lose access forever to purchases and data, as Owen Williams almost did. Apple confirmed today that starting with its public betas of OS X 10.11 and iOS 9, two-factor authentication won't have a Recovery Key. Instead, if you have to reset a password or lose access to devices, you'll have to go through an account verification process with human beings.

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Re:Good by Maestro485 · 2015-07-09 04:39 · Score: 4, Informative

Except this is the recovery key for an Apple account, not an encryption key. Apple explicitly has access to information about your account. For example, they know which songs you've purchased from iTunes and which iPhone apps you've downloaded.
This has nothing to do with encryption. This information is already available to the government if they have a warrant. The recovery key in question here is to authenticate, not to decrypt.