A bug appearing for a small number users on iCloud.com may allow them to temporarily track and make changes to Macs belonging to other users, according to reports appearing on Twitter. Users have noted that Macs with names they don’t recognize recently started appearing in the device list on the Find My iPhone web service, allowing them to remotely lock or erase the computers in some cases, or just play a sound in others.
Update: The exact nature of the problem is difficult to pin down, but a person aware of the issue says that this is likely related to users not properly erasing their Macs before transferring them to someone else. Sources have told us that following the steps on this Apple help document should fix it. That said, we’re still investigating since some users don’t seem to fall into that category, and have reached out to Apple for more information.
Some users also speculate that perhaps these are used Macs that were sold to someone else and are now pinging the wrong iCloud account. It’s certainly a possibility that this could be the source of the confusion, since Find My Mac configuration is saved on a computer even after the operating system has been reinstalled.
[tweet https://twitter.com/cabel/status/598915699675770882 align=’center’]
That theory doesn’t seem to always hold up in this case, however, since some users seeing the problem claim to have never sold their Mac to a friend.
[tweet https://twitter.com/dogweather/status/598901261509873665 align=’left’ width=’345′] [tweet https://twitter.com/senior/status/598921173175406593 align=’right’ width=’345′]
[tweet https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/598907250825175040 align=’left’ width=’345′] [tweet https://twitter.com/holaMau/status/598907684461551617 align=’left’ hide_thread=’true’ width=’345′] [tweet https://twitter.com/jasonmp85/status/598907866477502464 align=’right’ hide_thread=’true’ width=’345′]
[tweet https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/598923335435706369 align=’center’ hide_thread=’true’ width=’700′]
At least one user reports knowing the person whose Mac showed up on his account, so the glitch may not be entirely random. Other affected machines could be used computers or loaners (as suggested by John Siracusa above) that simply didn’t get wiped from the user’s iCloud account properly.
[tweet https://twitter.com/jasonpbecker/status/598909538088001536 align=’center’ hide_thread=’true’]
Several of us here at 9to5Mac have checked our own accounts and found nothing out of the ordinary. It seems likely that this is simply a case of machines that were previously linked to an iCloud account showing up again in error, and not necessarily a widespread issue allowing anyone to hijack a random stranger’s Mac.
[tweet https://twitter.com/dogweather/status/598922102649987072 align=’center’ hide_thread=’true’]
One of the users reporting the issue above also postulates that this bug could be connected to him being in the area shown on the map yesterday, though this solution seems unlikely. In any case, if you happen to spot a strange Mac listed on your iCloud account, the best thing to do is simply leave it alone.
Some users may recall that Apple’s iTunes Connect portal suffered from a similar problem earlier this year when developers started seeing apps and login names belonging to different developers. In another case, emails sent to iCloud address were delivered to the wrong users.
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I’m the person who sees “Manuello” in my Find My iPhone app. To help debug this, here’s what I know:
* I haven’t sold or gotten rid of a device.
* I hadn’t been on foot in Manuello’s neighborhood for 3 years … until yesterday when I was skateboarding there.
* Today I can’t find my iPhone, which is why I started up the app in the first place…
Very strange. Unfortunately these types of bugs seem to be par for the course these days with Apple.
Update: I found my phone, in my car in its underground parking garage. So the only nexus remaining is that I was in Manuello’s neighborhood yesterday.
This has happened to me, but I figured I just didn’t de-register my device from my apple id properly. But lo and behold, I had. I also reinstalled the OS prior to selling the MBA to a buddy of mine, but the existence in Find My iPhone persists. He’s tried cleariing things on his end (not sure what), but the result is just ” Macbook (2)”, and then “(3),” etc. Huh. Go figure, especially since I’ve sold other devices and wiped them similarly but none of them have turned up.
I am glad I change my hard drives before I sell my computers people
That’s great but would not make a lick of difference in this situation.
Find my Mac/iPhone most likely registers the MAC address of your NIC card, and probably has nothing to do with your hard drive.
This happened to me with my recently sold MacBook Air (but the device is marked “disconnected”). Before selling I didn’t reinstall the OS but instead, I created an admin user and then deleted my admin account.
This happened to me as well. I smoked the hard drive and reinstalled the current OS X at the time before i sold my old MBP.
I’ve had the problem. And that’s not good, that shows that contrary to what Apple says, they track the machines address. I completely erased my computer before selling it. Now it seems like I could erase it from distance if I wanted to… not cool.
omg, i read this article and decided to check my account for fun. to my horror (or maybe to the horror of people i sold my old macs to). it was showing a MacBook Pro i sold three years back & two other macs i gave to friends recently. i erased all the hard drives on these macs. i was able to play a sound on the macbook pro. i could have erased it! i don’t understand how this could be since i fully erased these macs.
Fully erasing the Macs doesn’t remove Find My Mac. As noted in some of the tweets in the article, that isn’t stored on the hard drive. It has to be stored in a separate hardware componenet so that if a thief reinstalls the OS, it can still be tracked and recovered.
I’m one of the people who’s tweet is posted here. I see someone else’s iMac (even though it’s named Jary’s MacBook Pro). The thing is, I used to own an iMac but lost it in a fire 2 years ago. The electronics cleaner said it was unrecoverable and I assumed had trashed it. If in fact the problem is with old machines still tied to iCloud accounts then that means they sold it and have some explaining to do!
This happened to me! I sold a 2008 MacBook Pro that had a bowl leopard on it at the point of sale and a 2011 MacBook Air that had Mavericks on it at the point of sale. In both cases, when the buyer upgraded to Yosemite (years after sale) the device showed up find my iPhone.
*snow leopard