Many Samsung customers have found themselves locked out of their accounts over the past couple of days, and it seems that the likely cause is their use of alias Gmail accounts.
On Reddit and Samsung’s own community forum, people are reporting that they received the message “Account deactivated for security reasons” when trying to sign in to their accounts or after being forcibly signed out.
From the reports, the issue seems to have started on Monday and are not isolated to one geographic area, with posts from people in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Spain. It’s affected users’ access to their Samsung phone settings, Samsung Find, Samsung Wallet, Samsung SmartThings, and more.
So far there is no solution or even public acknowledgment of the issue from Samsung.
Gmail alias accounts emerge as a potential cause
Some Samsung customers believe the lockout is tied to their use of alias email addresses.
This theory has been borne out by those who have spoken to Samsung support on the phone.
One user posted, “Samsung support have told me they’ll get back to me too, the potential cause of this seems to be at least that the email has a + alias in it, with the further possibility that it might only be if there’s multiple accounts registered for the same base email (eg. email+1@gmail.com, email+2@gmail.com etc.).”
Another user received an email response from support that seemed to acknowledge that the problem’s origins lie with aliases:
“I will now transfer your case to our Escalation Team for additional assistance and investigation. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and I appreciate your patience and cooperation throughout the process.
Once your account has been reactivated. To help keep it active and prevent it from being deactivated again, we recommend one of the following options:
Update the account email address to a unique, valid email address instead of a Google alias email.
Delete any alias account that is no longer needed.
If multiple alias accounts are linked to the same inbox, Samsung may deactivate all related accounts, including the original account.
You can manage your account email by visiting account.samsung.com and following these steps:
Sign in > Profile > Manage Samsung Account > Email ID
Please make the necessary changes at your earliest convenience to avoid any future account deactivation. Let us know if you need any guidance along the way.”
Samsung support has not lived up to its name
However, most customers have not been able to get any sort of response or help from Samsung.
Several posts have responses that customers have spent a long time on the phone trying to speak to an actual person and, if they have managed to talk to one, it did not result in their issue being solved.
Those on the Samsung Community Forum report that they had to create new accounts just to post about the problem.
Android Police has contacted Samsung about the matter. We have not heard back, but if we do, we will update this story.