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Samsung is randomly deactivating some accounts for ‘security reasons’

A bizarre issue has left many Samsung Galaxy owners locked out of their Samsung accounts which were “deactivated for security reasons.”

Over the past 24 hours or so, a number of Samsung Galaxy users have taken to the web with reports of being locked out of their Samsung accounts. A message appears saying that the account is “deactivated.”

Can’t sign in. Account deactivated for security reasons.

Dozens of users have reported the issue across Reddit threads and Samsung’s Community forums. Samsung hasn’t directly provided an explanation for the issue. This can have a pretty big impact on using a Galaxy device, especially if a user is invested in Samsung’s software ecosystem including apps like SmartThings, Wallet, and Find.

Some users appear to have had success getting back into their account with the help of support, but it’s very hit or miss.

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While there’s no clear problem at play here, it does appear that alias email addresses may play a role – adding “+” or “.” to an address. One support representative apparently mentioned this and a number of those affected mentioned that they do indeed use an alias of their email address for their Samsung account. But not everyone affected uses an alias, so this is likely not the sole cause.

Samsung has yet to confirm the issue or comment on a fix beyond generic troubleshooting. We’ve reached out to Samsung for more information and will update this article when we hear back.

If you’re running into this problem, let us know in the comments below.

Thanks Evan!

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

Find him on Twitter @NexusBen. Send tips to schoon@9to5g.com or encrypted to benschoon@protonmail.com.