What if someone takes my email on GitHub? How can I recover it?

[alexrintt]

If someone link my email as a secondary email in their GitHub account, I’ll not be able to create any account linked to my email anymore, since GitHub will say that the email is already in use (This happens even if the email is not verified by the user who took my email)

How can I proceed? How can I claim my email to my account?

TL;DR

Let two users, Abel and John. Abel already have a GitHub account and a verified email [email protected], John doesn’t.

Abel knows the email of John ([email protected]) and then proceed to link his email as a secondary email, now Abel has two linked emails into your GitHub account (abel@email as primary and verified email, and [email protected] as secondary but not verified)

Now, if John tries to create a new GitHub account using your own email [email protected] GitHub doesn’t allow and shows a message Email invalid or already in use

Abel can’t verify the email since the email is owned by John. So, how can John proceed and claim his email?

Image exempliflies the Abel GitHub email configuration:

The image below exempliflies John view:

[jdevfullstack]

yup, that’s a possibility, particularly if an old email with commits or even so, badges,

so you want to make sure, you take it before anyone else

if in your case, contact support, hopefully they will respond,

https://support.github.com/contact/account

if you know the other person using your email, you can report him too by going to his / her profile and clicking report, lower left of the profile

this is almost the same problem with usernames that are not released,

[adamc00]

Unlinking your email address from a locked account should probably be attempted before contacting support.

[mrthawzinoo]

How to recover unlinking account ?