iCloud Verification Email Fix

Additional to iOS 5 and iPhone 4GS, Apple has also introduced a new Cloud storage service known as iCloud. The purpose of iCloud is to upload data that can be shared among other Apple related devices that can access the Internet. You can upload documents, images to daily mobile backup incase you want to retrieve it later. 5GB of free storage is given automatically and additional storage can be purchased.

When I booted up iOS 5, the iCloud setup initiated automatically. I was curious so I decided to login using my apple authentication into the storage. The login worked and the final stage of the authentication was to verify my email. I waited for long time but the email never came. It wasn’t in my spam box and it didn’t seem to have got sent correctly.

So I went Google searching and found out that additional to all these changes, Apple has also changed the account settings. In 2006 when I bought my iPod, I setup an account in Apple with my custom username. Then when I got my iPhone 4, the mobile had setup a new account using my email address as the username. Both accounts have the same email addresses. Apple had failed to recognize it back then and therefore I had 2 accounts (one with a custom username and one with my email address as username) with them. The iCloud verification email system was confused about which account to send the email to. And therefore it failed to send any email at all.

There was only 1 solution to this. I had to reset one of the accounts with a new email address therefore both accounts will have unique email addresses.

1. Go to https://appleid.apple.com/
2. Click on Find out link under “Not sure if you have an Apple ID?” (see screenshot below)

1. Fill out your First Name, Last Name and the Email Address that you want to use for iCloud.
2. On the next screen, select Email Authentication option and click Next.
3. Check in your Email Inbox and you would have received an email from Apple.  Click on Reset your Apple ID password link in the email.
4. You can see multiple accounts  associated with the same email address. (see below)

1. Choose the Apple ID that you would NOT like to use for iCloud and click Next.
2. Enter a new password to reset the password for this account.
3. Go to https://appleid.apple.com/ and click Manage your account link.  Use the Apple ID that you would NOT like to use for iCloud and the new password that you had just entered.
4. Click on Edit link under Primary Email Address section, provide a new email address.  Click Save.
5. Click Sign Out.

Now that you have removed the 2^nd  account using the same email address, you can login to the primary account by going to https://appleid.apple.com/ once again using the credentials of the primary account. Below the email address, there will be a link to resend verification email. Click on that link and confirm the email address using the link you receive in your email.

This will clear up the accounts for you. Now your accounts will be unique with different email addresses. This unfortunate situation could have been avoided if Apple had made email addresses unique back then. Unfortunately they had put that limitation only now.