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I got this security alert from Google lately, but I'm not sure if it is legit. Someone might have tried to scam me, because it says my E-Mail was linked to another as the recovery email. Either coincidence or someone wanted to harm me. I'm not even sure, whether this email is real, because it was sent from identity-reachout.bounces.google.com, which doesn't really sound like it's a legit email, but has been signed accounts.google.com. I have logged into my Google account and removed any of my older logins, because of previous attempts of getting my custom ROM to work properly. Not only that, but I have checked for unauthorized logins and more, but I'm still very suspicious of that email. Any advice? Is this actually a legit email from Google and is my account affected? If it's real: what should I make sure, to not get my account permanently deleted?

I have this screenshot of the email's body …
Email content

… and this screenshot of the email information.
Sender information

Generally, my account's language is set to German, while the stated linked email's might be set to English.

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  • This looks to be the same thing: security.stackexchange.com/questions/141941/…
    – schroeder ♦
    Jun 11 at 19:30
  • Do you think the trick they used in the linked question could be used to generate this "Your Google Account has been deleted..." headline?
    – Yogu
    Jun 12 at 6:55
  • I actually got onto a Google page and got a confirmation my account has been restored. If this was a scam though, would I see other logged in devices? Or can I somehow log off all other devices so they are out of my account and can't access it without the new 2FA key?
    – Alpha-Craft
    Jun 13 at 13:54
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    Google should add a confirmation to the process of adding a recovery e-mail, to prevent scammer/spammer from linking their accounts to emails they don't control. Then instead of scary "Your account has been deleted" emails, the innocent victims would get "Request to configure recovery email" to which they could click "deny".
    – Ben Voigt
    Jun 14 at 15:46
  • Does "got a confirmation my account has been restored" mean it shows something like "account was suspended" followed by "account restored", or does it just mean your account is working and you assume it was restored because the (possibly fake) email said it had been suspended?
    – TripeHound
    Jun 14 at 21:17

1 Answer 1

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There are ways to forge this sort of email, but if the "account recovery page" link looks legit (don't click it even if it does), then it's probably a valid alert.

When presented with such an alert, the best course of action is to log into the affected account (manually—do not follow links from a suspicious email!). Google should show you everything you need upon login. It looks like you did that given your comment:

I actually got onto a Google page and got a confirmation my account has been restored. If this was a scam though, would I see other logged in devices? Or can I somehow log off all other devices so they are out of my account and can't access it without the new 2FA key?

You should be able to see other active sessions (somewhere; I don't use Google and can't walk you through this) and you should be able to log them out. If there is any suspicion of account tampering, log out all other sessions, change your password, purge your authenticator codes, and then set up 2FA anew. (If you didn't use 2FA, there's nothing to purge, but you should absolutely set up some keys.)

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