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Suspicious Email - Deactivation due to inactivity

Esther Lawrence

Hello,

I received an email from Atlassian stating that I hadn't used my Jira app in a while and would need to login to avoid deactivation.

I thought the email was strange as I regularly use Jira on both the app and the desktop. Due to this I reported the email to my security team.

However I wanted to check if this did come from Atlassian and if so why I am receiving this message? It's really important that our account is not deactivated for any reason.

Best,

Esther

Accepted answers

All comments

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

Hello @Esther Lawrence

Please Open an Ticket under support.atlassian.com

We are community members and cannot really answer that.

Yes, overall these emails are mostly legitimate, but you should clarify with support why you are getting these emails even when you are active.

Best,

Arek 🤠

Evgenii

Hi, @Esther Lawrence

Reporting it to your security team first was exactly the right move. What is worth knowing:

Yes, Atlassian does send legitimate emails like this. Atlassian accounts that haven't been used for an extended period get an inactivity notice before deactivation. So the email type itself is real, not automatically phishing.

Why you'd get one while actively using Jira: the inactivity check applies to a specific Atlassian account (email address), not to you as a person. Maybe you occasionally created one more atlassian instance using your email. It's a very common situation.

How to verify safely, without clicking anything in the email:

Check the sender domain and have your security team look at the headers (SPF/DKIM). Legitimate Atlassian notices come from atlassian.com domains.
Open a browser manually and go to id.atlassian.com, log in with the address the email was sent to. If the account is active and works, you've satisfied the "log in" requirement anyway, with zero risk.
If anything still looks off, raise a ticket at support.atlassian.com (as @Arkadiusz Wroblewski suggested) and attach the email with headers, Atlassian can confirm whether it originated from them.

One reassurance: even if an unused account did get deactivated, deactivation of a personal Atlassian account doesn't delete your organization's Jira site or data, and accounts can be reactivated by logging in or via an admin.

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

Yep, shadow accounts/orgs created by mistake that are firing are mostly what I've seen in the past.

Esther Lawrence

Thanks both, that's very helpful. Esther

Esther Lawrence

Thank you, I have created a ticket.

Trudy P Claspill

Hello

I am going to contradict something that @Evgenii said.

These deactivation emails usually are about a Subscription/site, not an individual user's login account.

Atlassian has a policy about deacyivating inactive Free product subscriptions. I don't believe that they have a policy about deactivating individual user login accounts.

The email should include a site URL and identify the project (i.e. Jira) that has been inactive. Is that the same site/product you are regularly using?

The emails are sent only to users who are Organization Admins or Billing Contacts for the specified site and product. Have you ever set up a subscription for the specified product? You should be able to login to https://admin.atlassian.com and see any Organization for which you are an Organization Admin.

Evgenii

Hi, @Trudy P Claspill

Don't see any contradictions with what I wrote.
You're absolutely right, such emails are sent to org admin users. And it's very common situation, when user, under his work email creates new instances.
I faced this problem nearly a dozen times, when user created new instance, and I had to ask him to remove it, because he was the only admin of new instance.

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