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Our client's employees all have iPhone 6s. They don't share phones, and have never used each others, but strangely, as one user tries to download an app at the App store, it then asks for a completely different persons' iCloud password. The only thing these phones share is a WiFi network, and mail accounts on an Exchange server.

This has happened to two other phones within the same client employees. One of the phones actually asked for a completely different client iCloud password, even though these two people have never met before.

Why does this keep happening?

Update: I have answered this myself, and marked as the correct answer because that is exactly what were happening.

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  • They also share the same Exchange mail server. That would be the only think that has linked them all. Jul 20, 2015 at 14:41

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Is this an enterprise setup? How are the phones being managed? MaaS360, OS X Server, ect?

It sounds like the users are connected to the same App Store ID and all have different iCloud accounts they are logged into (or vice versa).

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  • The iPhones are standalone, they are not a part of a managed service. Every person has a separate iCloud account that they created themselves. They never log into each others accounts. Two of the people it happened to have never met, they were even ordered separately. Jul 20, 2015 at 15:15
  • One user also mentioned that it has happened to two people at home that also have never shared iPhones. It also happened to my sisters iPhone and one of our clients. It's happened quite often so I assumed it was a common problem. Jul 20, 2015 at 15:16
  • Just spoken with another user that said her personal iPhone had been asking for her daughters iCloud account, despite her never actually using it. Looks like it's to do with sharing the same internet connection or WiFi network? Jul 20, 2015 at 15:22
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    Who setup the exchange server?
    – ZOMGnerd
    Jul 20, 2015 at 16:03
  • Its affected people not on the exchange server. Also it's a popular hosted platform. How could an exchange server cause iPhones to ask for other peoples icloud details? Jul 21, 2015 at 16:56
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The answer was actually to do with the silly way Apple works when you run a backup with iTunes.

Person A backs up their iPhone which has an app called "Whatsapp".

Person B then backs up their iPhone which also has the same app. (Itunes will not backup Whatsapp as Person A already has).

Person B later restores their iPhone from their own backup.

Silly iTunes then uses Person A's backed up copy of Whatsapp to restore onto Person B's iPhone, which later causes the password prompt when performing updates.

We used the same laptop's and desktops to backup iPhones when going from iPhone 5 to 6, which caused this problem to happen all over the place.

EDIT: YES this is 100% what is happening which is why it is the answer, not sure why the down-vote, but probably from the unhappy guy in the comments that didn't like me calling his precious iTunes "silly". If you have the problem I had in the question, then this is the answer for it.

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    This answer is wrong (yes I'm aware that you wrote the question... the answer is still wrong). When you "backed up" all of your devices to the same computer, you connected them all to the same iTunes account and told iTunes they all belonged to the same person. That is what happens when you just click through every popup message on your screen without reading it. "Silly" iTunes simply did what you told it to do. Jul 18, 2016 at 10:35
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    @drg The answer is correct as it was exactly what was happening. Silly ITunes for not knowing that multiple backups were in fact of different phones. In fact, why should there ever be a need for ITunes to restore apps from OTHER backups. The point of doing a backup is to capture the device as exactly as it is, in order to restore it. From what I remember with this, is that it does this in order to save a couple of MB by not backing up apps that appear in other backups. But still it fails to see that it was someone else's backup. We didn't log into ITunes with any accounts to do this. Jul 18, 2016 at 10:41
  • You still fail to see that you caused the problem. iTunes did what it said it was going to do, rather than what you assumed it was going to do. What is rich is that apparently you were doing all of this for a paying client, who expected you to know what you were doing. Instead, you screwed up all of their phones. Jul 18, 2016 at 10:58
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    ITunes didn't say it was going to do that? Just checked it again. Apples poor design screwed up their phones. This mixxed with signal issues, battery drainage, poor call quality, brittle phone construction, we convinced them all to move away from iPhones. The bigger problem was solved! Jul 18, 2016 at 11:15

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