Back in May of last year, a long list of readers in countries around the world reported having access to Apple’s two-step verification security feature for their Apple ID. Shortly after the news broke, the feature disappeared in many countries signaling it had been launched prematurely. The only officially supported countries listed on Apple’s website included the “U.S., UK, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.” However, today the feature has appeared in several new countries including Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, & Spain. Apple has also updated its support pages for two-step verification here and here to list the new countries.
While it’s always possible the feature might disappear like last time, this time around things look more official with users having full SMS support through local carriers and Apple listing the new countries on its support sites. Apple also has a list of supported carriers for receiving SMS messages by country here that was just updated. The new feature will appear in Manage My Apple ID in the Password and Security section when you sign into the My Apple ID website.
Apple rolled out the two-step verification feature, which requires users to enter a unique verification code sent to a trusted device in order to access their Apple ID, in late March just as a major security hole in Apple’s account management was discovered.
Let us know in the comments below if the two-step verification feature becomes available in your country. More on two-step verification here.
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hmmm can’t understand. iCloud keychain sms verification works for my country while two-step verification not….
Nothing in Belgium so far
It’s been available to me (in Germany with german Apple ID) for quite a while. I’m pretty sure I’ve been using it since the summer at least
I’m in Canada and I’ve had two step verification enabled on my account since like forever. The only difference is before I was unable to add an SMS device because Canada wasn’t an option for the international part of the number. So perhaps I snuck in right before they took the option down.
I remember when it was announced in the U.S. but couldn’t find the setup screen or the link to follow to enable it. I’ll have to revisit this.
Yah, and after discovering this “major security loophole” over 1 year after launch much of the world is STILL waiting for roll out!!!!