Forum Discussion

maduro's avatar
maduro
New member | Level 2
3 years ago

Someone using my email built an account. How do I get it back?

I own the email that this account was set up on.  When I tried to log in it was in Spanish and had another persons profile and data in here.  I'm assuming this person must have used my actual email a...
account access
Account Settings
security
Megan's avatar
Megan
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago

Hi maduro, thanks for clarifying! 

 

In this case, and since the account is still linked to your email address, I suggest that you use the Help Center article I provided above, in order to add another layer of security to the account. 

 

If you have any questions, let me know!

mlarsson's avatar
mlarsson
New member | Level 2
3 years ago

Hi,

 

Same thing happened to me. Someone used an email address of mine, that previously had no account on dropbox. They created a new account with this email address.

 

The email address used is a modified version of my actual email address. It is modified so that it still points to my primary email box, because my email provider considers the following two addresses to be the same email address: "firstname.surname@email.com" and "firstnamesurname@email.com" i.e. the dot (.) is ignored. The dot is not apparently ignored by Dropbox though, and it also seems that email verification is not required since I never received any such email - I just got the "Welcome to Dropbox" email which is how I found out about this.

 

So, your advice is to simply "take over" this new account since it was (possibly by accident) created using my email address? That's all?

 

Let me know if you have any questions and I will attempt to clarify.

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    3 years ago
    mlarsson wrote:

    So, your advice is to simply "take over" this new account since it was (possibly by accident) created using my email address?

    Yes, exactly. Since it's linked to your email address, reset the password for the account and you should receive the reset information in your email. At that point, whomever was trying to use it would be unable to.

    • mlarsson's avatar
      mlarsson
      New member | Level 2
      3 years ago

      All right, thanks! I did that and enabled 2-factor authentication too. Just wanted to check that this is the recommended action.

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