Weird Password/iCloud stuff going on - baffled. “This is impossible.”

Question

I've had some weird stuff going on in the last few days.

1. On Wednesday, I was listening to a Podcast on my iPhone. This one is rated "E" for explicit. I was about 5 minutes from the end, when I stopped, planning on finishing the show later. When I returned the next day, the iPhone displayed "Episode Contains Explicit Content - To play this episode, allow explicit content in Restrictions." ?!?! I have no children in the home. No one else ever uses my iPhone. I didn't turn on Restrictions between Wednesday and Thursday. I didn't do an update. I didn't reset. I didn't backup or restore. Nothing changed, and yet.....

2. Tonight, I noticed that my Apple Watch didn't unlock my Mac. So, I opened the Security & Privacy section of System Preferences. The "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac" was unchecked, even though I have been using it for months. It was still working even after recently (one week?) changing Apple Watches. But, now, unchecked. WTF?

3. When I tried to check the "Allow Apple Watch to Unlock My Mac" option, I was prompted to "finish setting up iCloud...." I clicked "iCloud" which asked for my password. I haven't changed my password in months or years. I regularly use it and type it in manually. I visit appleid.apple.com or iCloud.com regularly, and type my password all the time. And, I have a mind for numbers and passwords. I don't forget passwords. Ever. And all my devices use iCloud Keychain....But, tonight, my password didn't work. I typed it in very carefully, several times. I typed it where I could see it, copied and pasted - fail. I visited iCloud.com and appleid.apple.com - both failed. I finally had to change my password. But, WTF?

Has this happened to anyone else? Recently or ever? Does anyone have a rational explanation as to why this could be happening? I sure don't. I'm not a novice with Apple, iCloud, iPhone, or computers in general, but damn if I'm baffled by this one. And a little worried/paranoid that it might be nefarious.

Answer 1

This might just be a simple service outage or a migration to move iCloud data to a new container or migrate it to make it ready for the fall iOS and macOS releases and new features that ran into a glitch.

The same way thing has happened to me recently. Yesterday I had stuff in my iPhone analytics dating back to July,8th. I went to show them to a coworker today and 80% of them were gone. I don’t have any idea how, that coupled with some other stuff has me worried that’s it’s nefarious.

I also feel as though somebody has reported me to the police and that I am now listed as an aggressive or dangerous person. So it's not at all odd to feel what you're feeling so I wanted to post that you're not alone in this take.