My Personal Atlassian Bitbucket Account is now inadvertently managed by an organization

[bockthom]

Hello,
I am seeking your advice in the following case:

I have a personal bitbucket accout that I have used for many years.

Yesterday, the e-mail address of my bitbucket account was inadvertently changed, and the new e-mail address linked to my account is provided by an organization. As a consequence, now my personal Bitbucket account is organization managed although my account never belonged to any organization. Wft? How can this happen? I did not authorize Bitbucket to transfer my personal, private account to an organization! This violates my privacy and restricts my account access without any authorization to do so. Even more, I am not able to change any settings of my account any more - especially, I am not able to reset my e-mail address to the previous one again.

I also contacted the organization that now manages my account inadvertently, and they told me that they cannot set an e-mail address that does not belong to the domain of the organization, although they would do so if the web interface would allow them to do so. So, only the Atlassian support is able to change my e-mail address to the previous one again.

How do I regain full access to my private Bitbucket account again, set the previous e-mail address again, and get the inadvertent organization management removed?

Thank you for your help!

[Syahrul]

G'day, @bockthom 

Welcome to the community!

I can confirm that we have not made any changes on our end. This issue occurs because the primary email address you used to register with Atlassian is part of a domain that has been claimed by your organization.

Unfortunately, once a domain has been claimed by an organization, we are unable to make changes to the email address. Only the organization's admin has the authority to update or modify the email address. This also only applies if the other email domain is part of their verified domain, if not they are unable to change the email address.

Since you mention that they are unable to do so, your options is to create a new Atlassian account and move your content over to the new account as our guide below:

Migrate Bitbucket cloud workspace to another workspace 

Regards,
Syahrul

[bockthom]

Actually, creating a new account does not solve the problem - with a new account, I won't receive access to all the repositories that are part of other people's workspaces. I guess, if I would create a new account, I would have to ask all the people that gave me access to their repositories to add my new account, right? This is impossible for me to do - I cannot reach out to all these people. Or is there any way to automatically transfer all the access rights I currently have on other repositories to a new account?

Why can't you just reset my e-mail address to the e-mail address that I have used two days ago? My account exists for more than 10 years now and never belonged to any organization. I just changed my e-mail address two days ago inadvertently without being notified that my account will be organization managed afterwards. This is a wrong behavior of your side, not on my side. You must have notified me beforehand that such a change will end up in losing my access rights. I never have authorized the organization to manage my account. Therefore, you can see in the logs which e-mail address I had used two days ago and for the last 10 years, so you basically must be able to change this in your database again. If necessary, I could also provide a proof from the organization that they don't want to manage my account because it does not belong to their organization. So, there must be a solution to fix this broken situation and get full access rights over my account again.

The problem becomes even more serious when I stop working for the organization that currently manages my account inadvertently. In such a situation, my e-mail address won't continue to exist. That would even more lead to losing my account with all the access rights I had before working for the organiatzion. This an absolute no-go!

As I never did authorize Atlassian to transfer my account to an organization, there must be a solution to reset my e-mail address in the database by your admins! You cannot tell me that this is not possible. Such an attitude violates all privacy and security principles and might also have legal implications.

[Syahrul]

Hey @bockthom 

You are correct, you will need to request access on all workspace/repository your current account have if you opt-in to create a new account.

Unfortunately, this is not Bitbucket issue, but rather account issue so I moved your questions to Atlassian account community to get assistance from expert in Atlassian account.

Regards,
Syahrul

[bockthom]

Thanks to Bitbucket Cloud Support, my issue is resolved now.

Let me explain how they resolved it: The organization needed to unclaim my account (which they did, of course, and which they were able to do upon request by Bitbucket Cloud Support although they have told me beforehand that they are unable to do so). After the organization had unclaimed my account, I could create an Atlassian ID with my previously used e-mail and then the Bitbucket Cloud Support was able to link my Bitbucket account to my Atlassian account again.

So, in fact, it is possible to solve problems like this (although you always get told that such problem cannot be solved).