Apple appears to be beefing up its security practices, at least for customers in Canada. According to iPhone Canada and numerous reports on Twitter – several from people reaching out to Wired – Canadian visitors to the iTunes Store are being required to fill out three security questions and supply a rescue email address if they have not previously done so.

While the company has been prompting users to do this for some time, it now appears to be requiring the additional account security measures for its Canadian customers. This could be the first step of attempts to restore the ability to issue password resets over the phone.

The company placed a temporary freeze on issuing over-the-phone password resets following Wired's story about a particularly devastating social engineering scam. Apple now refers people to its iForgot website to reset passwords. While making users go through online support and answer security questions there fixes the problem, it means that Apple can't offer effective phone support to anyone legitimately locked out of an AppleID account.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment.