{"id":19206,"date":"2017-10-12T14:46:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T18:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=19206"},"modified":"2021-07-03T14:18:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-03T18:18:20","slug":"strange-apple-id-sign-in-locations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/12\/strange-apple-id-sign-in-locations\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Apple ID Sign-In Locations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glenn Fleishman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The first step in Apple’s 2FA is a location alert that appears on every computer and iOS you own logged into the same Apple ID account. The notion is that you should validate that the location is correct before you proceed to get the code. Clicking Don’t Allow terminates the login attempt.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The location can also be imprecise. My wife routinely is told she’s logging in from about 30 miles south, although on the same home network, it’s more accurate for me. If we both had this issue, I’d expect that the IP address of our network was misplaced in whatever geo-identification system Apple relied on to match IPs with a rough place on the globe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Kirk McElhearn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I’m not near London; I’m about 100 miles away.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I don’t use a VPN, which would certainly affect this, and I find it surprising that the Apple devices that already know my exact location<\/em> can’t pass this info on to Apple’s authentication servers. Because if I look on Apple Maps on the same iPad, it pinpoints me, exactly where I am.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

This is particularly troubling because two factor authentication is promoted as being a more secure login option. If a typical user were to set that up and then be shown a map of a login attempt from miles away, they may be concerned, and reasonably so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2017-10-13): Michael Kummer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What puzzled me was that according to whatsmyip.org<\/a>, the geolocation of my IP is Atlanta, GA. So why would Apple show a different location? As it turned out, there are various geo-location databases, and each shows slightly different information. Separate databases map my IP address  to the following locations:<\/p>\n