Stolen Accounts

[jsh9091]

About half a year ago I experienced an issue were someone managed to hijack my Fitbit account. I contacted Fitbit support about it, but was never able to get my account back, including several years of data included in it. Fitbit said that were able to see my old account, but were always extremely vague about why there were not able to return the account to me. They made it sound like any time now they would get the issue resolved, but eventually I just gave up and created a new account, setting everything up from scratch. Having to create a new account was very frustrating, but I'd rather just move on with my life than being in limbo for months on end. That was half a year ago. 

Recently I started working on creating a Fitbit watch face as a side software development project. One of the steps in that process is logging into the Gallery App Manager. However, when I try to do that, I'm informed that my watch "[...} is already associated to another developer account. One watch can only be associated to one Fitbit developer account at a time." I had associated my watch to the developer account prior to having my old account hijacked last year. I contacted the  appgallerysupport AT fitbit DOT com email support describing the issue. They sounded very optimistic about being able to help me, at first. Today I got an email from them stating, "We have been receiving an increased number of similar requests as yours lately so we have been instructed to implement a new methodology to submit these requests to the appropriate teams. This change will temporarily slow down the process of sorting out your issue, we apologise for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience and understanding." Which is starting to make me feel a little worried about this issue getting resolved, just as the initial account hijacking issue never got fixed. It seems like disassociating the watch from the old dev account and allowing me to associating it with my current dev account should be pretty straight forward, I'm just not understanding why this should have to take weeks, if ever, to get resolved. I'd love to move forward with my watch-face project, but for now I'm just stuck. Is anyone else having problems like this? 

[Guy_]

Hi @jsh9091 - I moved your post here as it relates more to development.

Though how you lost control of the original account is odd. Did you try logging in to the GAM with your original account?

[jsh9091]

Thanks for moving the post to a more logical location. 

Yeah, I tried logging into the GAM with the old account credentials, didn't work.

Side note, the first time this year I fired up the Fitbit shell in Visual Studio Code a couple weeks ago, I noticed it was logged into my old account still, but displayed the new owner's name "Gannon Hawthorne" and his Google email address. Interesting but annoying to see the name and email for the person who hijacked my account. No, I won't be contacting them, that would seem unwise. I did jot down the info future reference, just in case. I logged out of the shell and the logged back into shell with my current Fitbit account. Hopefully this issue with moving my watch device over the new dev account will be resolved soon so I can log into the GAM. Fitbit support seemed initially very optimistic, but that was over a week ago, so we'll see I guess. 

[Guy_]

@jsh9091- thanks for the update, account hacking is a serious matter and without going into specifics here as this is a public forum, did you take up the matter with the email address provider of your account?

If you can prove ownership you may be able to reclaim it. Also have a look on this forum, as others have wanted to reclaim old accounts and this may have been done, and may be related to your problem.

Recontact appgallerysuppprt again and copy fitbit-app-gallery-support@google.com.

Even so I will flag this for a moderator who may be able to investigate.

[jsh9091]

@Guy_  I'm not sure I understand what you mean about taking up the matter with the email address provider of your account. How would I go about that? 

I can contact the fitbit app gallery support email again with the details of the hijacker's name and email. I didn't do that before because it didn't seem relevant at the time, partly because last fall when this all happened, Fitbit support repeatedly told me they could see the old account, so I assumed that the name and email info for the hijacker would also be seen. 

Thanks for the inputs and volunteering to flag a moderator! 

[Guy_]

@jsh9091 - your email address is used to login to the Fitbit accounts.

Can you still send and receive emails with that address?

Can you login to the online web dashboard with it?

If your original email address has been hacked, then the provider may be able to investigate

Also try logging in directly on your phone and on a PC to see if there is a difference when accessing Fitbit accounts in case a device has been hacked.

[jsh9091]

@Guy_ Yes, I still have access to both of the email accounts in question. The hijacker only hijacked my old Fitibt account, not the email account associated with my old Fitibit account. After he hijacked the account I was not able to log into anything Fitbit related as the hijacker changed the login information to his own. 

At this point, I honestly don't care about getting my old Fitbit account back, I just want to get my Fitbit device removed from my old dev account, to which I no longer have access, and associate it with my current Fitbit dev account so I am able to log into the GAM. 

[Guy_]

@jsh9091 - this serious Fitbit breach needs to be investigated and it may be simpler to restore your old Fitbit account which will resolve the issue entirely.

[jsh9091]

@Guy_ I went round and round with Fitbit support last November, they repeatedly claimed that they had identified the account, but would say things like, "We can still see your account, but it was under the compromised email. Our team is still looking to get this resolved." But nothing ever happened. Eventually they started suggesting that just create a new account.