Googlemail address being abused

[tgww123]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

My Question or Issue

The email address associated with my account is a @gmail.com address, 2 days ago I received an email asking to confirm the email on my account which I thought was odd because I had already verified it. I then got 2 emails in quick succession for a new login from France and one from Singapore.

I checked the email address that the emails were being sent to/from thinking my main account had been compromised. However I noticed that someone had used my @googlemail.com address to create an account as my @gmail.com address was already in use. I was able to reset the password for the account using the @googlemail.com address and sign out of all devices, then today I received and email from Spotify that they had reset the password for the @googlemail.com address because of suspicious activity.

I have control over both the @googlemail.com and @gmail.com spotify accounts, but I don't want this second one nor to get emails about it. However if I deactivate the account someone else could come along and use the @googlemail.com address to register an account again. My Gmail settings are set to use the @gmail.com address, however mail sent to the @googlemail.com address still gets delivered to my main inbox.

[Ivan]

Hey there @tgww123, 

Thanks for reaching out to us about this - we'll be glad to help you out here.
 

We suggest you first close the account you're not going to use. This way you won't be receiving anymore emails in connection to the redundant account. Check out this help page for more info on how to close the account. 

After performing these steps, we suggest you head to this help page. Here you'll find useful tips on how to secure your account in case of unauthorized access. Make sure you secure the account you're going to use in the future.  

Additional info on how to protect your Spotify account can be found here. 

Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes. 

[tgww123]

Hi @Ivan,

Surely if I deactivate the account that was not created by me that used the @googlemail address, they could just create another Spotify account using the @googlemail.com address after it is deactivated, or someone else would be able to do the same thing.

I only have 1 account that I created with Spotify that has a randomly generated 16 character password containing uppercase & lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. My account has never been compromised.

The issue I have is that currently anyone who knows the @googlemail.com address can sign up for a Spotify account as long as that email address is not associated with an existing Spotify account. So as far as I can tell the only way I have to prevent this is to keep the account active but not use it unless Spotify has a solution where an account cannot be used unless the email address is confirmed.

For example I also have another non gmail address and  I was just able to create and log in to a spotify account without any need for me to confirm via email that it was me who created the account.

[Ivan · Accepted solution]

Hey there @tgww123, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Keep in mind the same email address can't be registered more than once on Spotify's system. This means that once you close your account, the email address may not be registered second time after account closure. 

Also, make sure you check your spam or junk folders when creating a new Spotify account. We send an email to confirm the account creation, so you might have received this email in one of those folders. 

Hope this helps. Keep us posted. 

[carog23]

Hey there,
I've just had the same problem as tgww123. Someone set up an account on my gmail address that I do not use for spotify. I thought that the best would be to close that account as I could not change my account details, like date of birth and other things. I could close that account but it was written there that after 14 days the same email address could be used again (or that: the same address could not be used within the next 14 days).
It concerns me because I really do not want someone to use that email address again.
Are you sure that same email address could not be used twice?
Thanks.

[tgww123]

I deleted the account that was using the email and I've not had anyone else sign up for an account using the email address since. So not sure how their policy works with it but it has been ok so far.

[carog23]

thank you