How to generate app-specific password in iCloud account?

Winston Churchill:

Thanks for your reply, but the screen shot you posted is not what appeared in my browser. If it had, I never would have had to post here.

I got it straightened out with Apple Support. Once I received the Recovery Key, my account page should have showed that Two-Step Verification was "ON", and at that point the Generate Password link should have appeared...but it didn't.

Apple Support doesn't know why. They figure that, even though I got a 4-digit verification code and a Recovery Key, for some reason the approval for two-step verification "didn't take" (that was the Apple Senior Adviser's explanation).

Anyhow, I was eventually able to solve it by using my iPad Pro to turn on Two-Factor Authentication, which then placed the Generate Password link in the Security section of my iCloud account. After that I was able to generate app-specific passwords for each of my mac.com mail accounts in my SeaMonkey mail app. Problem solved.

Duane:

Which method are you trying to set up—two-factor authentication (2FA) or two-step verification (2SV)?

As you probably know, if you want to use 2FA...

Two-factor authentication is currently available to iCloud users with at least one device that's using iOS 9 or OS X El Capitan or later.

Alternatively...

If your account isn't eligible for two-factor authentication, you can still use two-step verification to protect your information.

In my case I opted for two-step verification because my Mac is running Yosemite, which apparently doesn't support 2FA.

As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, I got all the way up to the point where I received a Recovery Key, but for some reason it "didn't take". The evidence that it "didn't take" was the fact that Generate Password didn't appear in the Security section. If you've successfully turned on two-step verification, the Security section will show that it's "On", and the Generate Password... link will appear, as shown here...

In my case, it took two tries to get it to work. Maybe that's what happened to you.

Good luck!

Duane:

The unhelpful dialog is a result of Apple's current security procedures, in which any changes in critical identifiers (such as your password or your security questions) result in an automatic freeze on your account for a predetermined waiting period. I suppose they want to be sure that someone other than you hasn't made the change without your permission. In this case, you reset your password, and that activated the waiting period.

The same thing happened to my wife, and she's livid about it. She can't send or receive mail in her Apple mail account because of the two-step verification (2SV) requirement, and now she can't set up 2SV because she changed her password. Evidently, Apple doesn't warn you that changing your password will lock your account for several days. I'm sure it's doubly exasperating that System Preferences advised you to make that change in the first place.

I suspect that these new requirements are most likely Apple's response to the increase in the number of attempts by ne'er-do-wells to hack into Apple users' accounts. As you probably know, Apple limits the number of unsuccessful login attempts, after which your Apple ID is automatically locked. Once that lock is in place, you can't send or receive mail or use any other iCloud services that require a login until you visit Apple's web site and unlock your ID.

That probably happened to me at least a half dozen times over the past few months, and I definitely wasn't the one who made the unsuccessful login attempts. I suspect that a lot of folks were unhappy about their Apple ID being locked repeatedly, and the new security requirements should reduce those occurrences.

In the meantime, I'm sorry to say that I don't know what you can do about the waiting period. If you have an Apple Care support agreement, you might try calling support to see whether there's anything they can do to help, but I wouldn't bet on it. Apple's flexibility on their policies seems to be inversely proportional to the company's growth.

Perhaps that's a matter of necessity for any multi-billion dollar company...I dunno, but it surely has changed the Apple user experience. I've been a Mac user for over 31 years, and like most other human systems, changes for the better are often accompanied by some changes for the worse.

Anyhow, the "unhelpful dialog" you posted indicates that Apple's system at least recognized that you were trying to set up 2SV. At least that's a good sign. As I posted earlier, I got all the way to the point in the process where Apple sent me a Recovery Key, and it still didn't change the Security section settings to show that 2SV was "On". I had to do it again to get the change to "take". Perhaps it's a bug in Apple's system. Maybe they'll get it fixed by the time your waiting period expires.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

That's easy to solve. You need a separate app-specific password for your email-only account.

I have exactly the same set-up, except that I'm using SeaMonkey with one primary account and five email-only accounts, and I've already got those accounts to work in SeaMonkey's mail app under the new log-in system with "app-specific passwords".

Apple treats your email only accounts as separate iCloud accounts. Yes, you're accessing them all through the same SeaMonkey application, but that's not the way Apple's servers see it. As far as the servers are concerned, you might just as well be accessing each account from different applications.

Here's the solution: You have to log into iCloud using the email-only account's address as your Apple ID, and then use the password you've assigned to that account. You'll be asked some security questions as part of the login process, and you might even be asked to verify your payment information if you haven't already done so.

Once you're logged in, you'll see all the same categories of information that you saw for your primary account. Go to the Security section, and repeat the same process that you went through for your primary account. Go all the way through the process and generate another app-specific password. That's the password you will enter in SeaMonkey to use the email-only account.

NOTE: You probably already know this, but you have to enter each app-specific password twice for each separate mail account; once for the IMAP server and then once again for the SMTP (outgoing) server.

I understand how there might be some confusion resulting from Apple's use of the term "app-specific password". In the case of SeaMonkey (or any mail client in which you use multiple accounts), you have only a single application that's providing access to multiple logins. Perhaps it would be less confusing to call it an "account-specific password".