I’m on vacation in a city hundreds of miles from home. My plane ticket is on my phone. I drop my phone and break it, needing a new one. How do I get logged back in on my new phone, to get access to my ticket, so I can catch my flight home?
In my particular situation, 2FA was forced upon me by Apple some time earlier. Through dumb luck, I happened to bring an iPad on my trip which I was able to use for 2FA to get logged back in and get home. If I hadn’t brought a 2nd device, or wasn’t in my home locations (with the setup you mention), what do I do?
A lot of people have a phone as their only device these days. 2FA, or location dependent 2FA seems really bad. I don’t know how people recover when a primary, or their only, device is lost/broken?
I have since setup a recovery key with Apple. I’m planning a trip in a couple weeks. I’m thinking I need to write down my recovery key and keep it in a money belt, so if something goes wrong I have a way to get at my data, so I can get home. But is the average user going to do any of that? No way. This all seems like a huge risk.