Unauthorised access to my account

[user-removed]

Hi,

I have raised this twice via chat (initially four days ago) and am awaiting contact from a team via e-mail for a resolution with no timeframe given. I'm hoping someone can help as the below is unacceptable, please read to understand why.

My account has been compromised and someone is having great fun listening to 70s music from my spotify account. I've tried several things myself, including:

Changing the password

Logging out of all devices

Checking who has access in 'my family'

Checking my 'devices' and removing one

This didn't work, more 70s music was streamed.

I then contacted Spotify support where the agent seemed, from my perspective, to repeat the steps I completed above and suggested I refer to the user manual of the device that the unauthorised user is accessing my account from (don't know how to respond to this). They advised it *might* be fixed I requested this be looked into further as I need it to be fixed. It was logged for resolution via e-mail.

I checked my recently played music and noticed a new addition, asked the agent to see if this was played since we had started speaking (and the precautionary measures taken). The agent wasn't able to check this and suggested I download my personal data as this *might* show this, I followed the link to do this and saw this takes up to 30 days. Still waiting for this data (seriously?)

This didn't work, more 70s music was streamed.

Several days later I contacted Spotify support again and the agent seemed very understanding, and tried to help. I stressed I need a response as it is unacceptable for someone to be using my account actively and it doesn't seem Spotify can do anything to stop this. Seemed to repeat the same steps above. Didn't advise me to check the user manual of the device that the unauthorised user is accessing my account from (thankfully). 

This didn't work, more 70s music was streamed.

Few points from me:
I have never given anyone my Spotify password, nor have I logged into anyone else's devices with my Spotify account. I'm not that generous.

I now know that the person is accessing my acount from an Echo, don't know how this helps me as I keep removing them from my devices but they keep appearing there.

What I have done that makes me feel better:
When my music stops playing, and my phone shows me that the unauthorised user is playing 70s music, I change it to Rammstein and put the song on repeat and turn the volume to max. Occasionally the volume goes down, I max it again. Occasionally it pauses, I play it again. Eventually the devices disconnects. It doesn't help, but it's extremely satisfying.

On a serious note it's completely ridiculous that someone is on my account, Spotify knows this, and nothing effective has been done. I'm astounded that this is taking so long to resolve, and I simply need to wait for someone to contact me eventually to fix it. This isn't ok - I loved Spotify but your service is horrendous, and this surely is a serious security flaw.

I don't know if i'll have any more luck here - it's taken a lot of effort to watch my language but sort it out!

Horrific job so far Spotify, well done. Me trolling the user is more useful than anything you've been able to do.

[Jᴀᴄᴋ]

Hey @user-removed thanks for reaching out to the community,

Thats very odd to hear, I’d recommend reaching out to Spotify for more help with this. You can find some more info here on how to do this. At this point there is nothing myself or you can do, but make sure to tell Sptofiy you have read the support article and nothing is solving the issue. If you want to take a look at this Spotify Answer, maybe there is something in the article that could help still.

Best,

Jack

[user-removed]

Thanks for the response Jack,

I've reached out to them several times but need to wait for them to get back to me but it's been almost a week. Am so shocked at how poor the service has been for such a  serious issue.

Thanks for the article also, already tried all those steps but I appreciate the link. So far the Rammtsein method has been most effective.

Thanks,

Darren

[user-removed]

As an update, this has been going on for eight days now, my Spotify Premium account is still being used by someone else.

I reached out to SpotifyCares on twitter who said they'd pass my email onto the Accounts team (for the third time now). 17 hours ago I asked three questions on twitter but still no response:

When am I going to get contacted?

Why has it taken so long?

How do I make a complaint?

The longer this goes on, the worse the service seems to get.

[Peter]

Hey @user-removed.

Thanks for reaching out to us again, and apologies for the wait.

Just to confirm, did our Customer Support team already try to secure your account for you on their end?

If so, and if you're still seeing the Echo device connecting to your account, then try heading to your account overview page here and clicking on "sign out everywhere". This would mean that the unauthorised user would have to re-enter your credentials, which you will have hopefully changed when you had your account secured.

Let us know how you get on! We'll be here in case you need any further help with this 😉

[buhbah029]

Having a similar issue: someone logging into my account and adding a boatload (80+ songs at at time) of garbage music to my "songs" playlist, which I have to manually delete one by one. 

I consider this a pretty serious issue and from what I can see, spotify has no live support capabilities. Ended up cancelling premium today after 4 years due to this. 

[user-removed]

Hi Peter,

The Customer Support team attempted to secure my account several times. I've also removed the device and changed my password and I believe this is something they did when they tried to secure my account also, but it would just show up again. I also tried the 'sign out everywhere' option several times.

Thanks,
Darren

[user-removed]

Hi Buhbah,

To me that was the worst of it - that no one seemed to consider it as serious an issue as I did and that I couldn't be put in touch with anyone that could help - I had to just keep waiting for someone to e-mail me (but no one could say how long this would take).

I've just had to close my old account and create a new one to try stop this, but I don't know if it will stop the person accessing my account again like they did in the first place.

I've also cancelled my subscription, mainly due to the service received so far from Spotify and made a complaint. I'll let you know the outcome of my complaint to see if it changes anything. I don't know if I can advise if a new account fixes the issue because i'm not premium anymore so no one can connect devices to access the account including me.

So so frustrating.

[Peter]

Hey @user-removed and @buhbah029,

Thanks for your feedback on this, and apologies that this has negatively impacted on your experience of Spotify. Rest assured that we do take fraud seriously, and that we follow up on such cases when they are reported to us.

@user-removed - I think that in this case the best thing to do was to create a new account, hopefully you shouldn't have any further problems, but if you do, do reach out and we'll do our best to help.

@buhbah029 - we do also support via live chat in English. For future reference, if you fill out our contact form here, click through the relevant menus and select "I still need help", it will take you to a page where you need to provide more info. Then, if there is a chat advisor available, you should see the "Start Chat" button at the bottom.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any further questions.

[donbergaaas]

change password

[vinisantos]

For people who don't know what's going on saying "Change your password", please don't!!!! This is a huge security flaw on Spotify. This is not a user-side issue. It might be something with the Facebook API because I also use it and it happened to me. There were two unauthorized accounts on my profile. I'm in cybersecurity for whatever that's worth. Spotify has reset my account, all my downloads, etc. Which is a hassle. Spotify needs to get their act together right now. It's easy to see it's a widespread issue!