Unrequested password reset messages

Proton Mail allows you to request a password reset if you forget your password. Here you can find instructions to reset your password(new window).

However, if you receive an email from Proton Mail to reset your password which you did not request, this indicates that someone has correctly filled in the combination of your Proton Mail username and recovery email address, possibly by accident. This password reset email does not mean that your account has been compromised, and it is not an indicator of a data breach or leak. Additionally, this does not pose a security issue provided your recovery email account is not accessible to the person trying to reset your password.

If you did not request a password reset, you can ignore the message. If this happens repeatedly, you may want to consider changing your recovery email, especially if your Proton Mail username is the same as on your recovery email. This can be guessed by random people as well as by people who may want to deliberately spam you. 

How to prevent unsolicited password reset emails

If your recovery email is a Gmail address, you can try changing your recovery address to use a “+” alias to make it harder for an attacker to guess. For example, if your recovery email is example@gmail.com, you can change it to example+protonmail@gmail.com or example+recovery@gmail.com.

To further secure your email accounts, we recommend activating two-factor authentication(new window) (2FA) if you have not done so already.

We will also be implementing additional measures to make it harder for the password reset feature to be abused in the future.

If you have any further concerns regarding reset emails, please contact our Support team(new window).