Blockchain.com is one of the largest providers of self-custody crypto wallets, reporting more than 85 million wallets in December of 2022.
One of the ways that Blockchain protects its users is that during the login process they will send an authorization email to the email address on file for that wallet. The user must verify that they control the email address by opening the email and clicking a button to approve the Login attempt.
As long as you (the valid owner of the wallet) have control of the email address, and no spam filter gets involved, this adds to the security of your wallet – as long as nothing goes wrong.
If something does go wrong, you’re still fine as long as you have your 12 word recovery seed. But, if you no longer have your recovery seed you can end up locked out of your wallet.
By the way, this article can help you learn how to recover your lost Blockchain password.
No, Blockchain did not require that you add an email address to your wallet settings until around 2015. Wallets configured before then may or may not require an auth email.
We commonly see two different email subject lines for these emails:
When you open these emails, you’ll generally see a brief message telling you that either Blockchain noticed a login attempt, or that a login attempt to your Blockchain account was made from an unknown browser.
You’ll then see what time the login attempt was made, the web browser, the IP address and the location from which the request was made.
Finally, near the bottom of the email you’ll see a button that typically says: Authorize Log In
If you wait more than 10 minutes after this auth email is sent, the authorize button will “expire”, meaning that you’ll see an error after you click the button, and you will have to trigger the email again.
Here are a couple of easy-to-solve problems when emails don’t arrive:
There are also more complicated problems. The worst is that you have simply lost control of your email address. This can happen for a couple of different reasons:
1. Check your spam folder. If the Blockchain emails are there, mark them as "Not spam" so that they appear in your Inbox.
2. Check other email addresses that you control. Perhaps the authorization emails are landing in a different Inbox.
3. Blockchain has noted that email addresses are case-sensitive when they are stored in their database. That is, if you initially stored your email as: Me@example.com -- you need to capitalize the "M" in "Me" when you try to login. If you login with: me@example.com, and you don't receive an authorization email, trying logging in as: Me@example.com. (This only affects you if you are trying to login to your wallet with an email address -- if you are logging into your wallet with your Wallet ID, this has no effect).
4. Whitelist Blockchain's email addresses with your email client. Here are the steps to add Blockchain.com as a Gmail contact:
Now, go back to Blockchain.com’s login page and try again.
5. If you are logging in with your Blockchain Wallet ID rather than an email address, are you 100% sure that you have typed the numbers and letters correctly? (This is most common when you’re typing from an image). Wallet IDs are made up of 32 alphanumeric characters and 4 dashes. They takes the following format:
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
6. If none of these steps work, it’s still possible that mail delivery is just delayed. Please wait up to 24 hours, and then check your spam folder and inbox to see if the email arrived.
If you control your email address, you've gone through these 6 troubleshooting steps, and you still aren't receiving authorization emails, then skip to the section titled: How to Change the Email Address Associated with your Wallet
So, you can no longer log into the email address that is associated with your Blockchain.com wallet. Perhaps you left a job that gave you the email address; perhaps you’ve gotten locked out of a free email address like Yahoo.com or Gmail.com; or perhaps you’re trying to log into a loved one’s wallet that has passed away.
There are really only two ways to solve this problem:
If you’ve lost control of a free email address like Yahoo.com or Gmail.com, those services offer options to regain control of your account. Here are instructions for several popular email providers:
If you lost your email address when you left a job, your task is going to be more social engineering than technical engineering. Is your old email getting forwarded to your boss? If you left on good terms, could you ask that person for help? If you didn’t leave on good terms, could you reach out to a friend at the company and ask if they could help?
If you previously owned the domain yourself (me@my24hourcarwash.com), but let the registration lapse, try going to a domain registrar (like GoDaddy.com) and searching for the domain. If no one owns it, you may be able to re-register it for about $10. Once you’ve registered the domain, the registrar will be happy to add a webmail service for a few extra dollars a month. This would allow you to recreate the exact email address, and receive the authorization email.
If none of these ideas work, then you’ll need to ask Blockchain.com to change the email address for you.
Blockchain has a process to change the email address associated with your wallet. If you can reassert control of the email address, that is generally a faster way to recover access to your wallet. But, if you have tried to regain control and failed, then this is your last option.
You’re going to need to contact Blockchain's support team and prove to them that you are the rightful owner of the wallet. They will generally ask you for the following information:
This can often be a frustrating -- and time-consuming! -- process to go through. We have helped dozens of people change the email addresses associated with their wallets -- often within a couple of hours. If you’d like help working through this process, please contact us.
