I set up two-factor authentication for my Apple ID yesterday. I had tried previously, and it was a disaster. In spite of some confusing instructions from Apple, it seems to have worked so far.
But I was surprised to find that, when I was logging into different devices, it didn’t show the correct location.
I’m not near London; I’m about 100 miles away.
Coincidentally, Glenn Fleishman has an article in Macworld about this today. But he doesn’t really explain why this happens. He mentions someone in Louisiana, who is told he’s logging in near San Fransisco; or his wife, who gets told she’s logging in about 30 miles from where she is.
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 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.
This is particularly disturbing because it may make you think that someone is trying to hack your account. If you have just tried to log into your Apple ID on a device, you can safely assume that the alert is simply worng. Or can you? This doesn’t seem like good security to me.