Recovering a lost account
Account recovery exists for one situation: every device that holds your passkey is gone — lost, stolen, broken, or wiped. If you still have any signed-in device or any device with a working passkey, you don't need this flow; just sign in there and add a new passkey under Settings → Account → Account security → Passkey.
Recovery is built from things you set up when you created the account: your recovery email, your recovery codes, and your security questions. It never involves sending us a photo of your ID, and no Seldeo employee can skip the checks for you — that inflexibility is what keeps the recovery path from being a takeover vector.
Before you start, have ready
- Access to your recovery email inbox.
- One unused recovery code from the set you saved at sign-up — or, if the codes are gone too, the answers to your security questions.
The recovery flow
- Open the Seldeo app on the device you want to use from now on.
- On the welcome screen, tap Account recovery.
- Enter your recovery email address. We send a six-digit code to that inbox.
- Enter the six-digit code.
- Enter one of your recovery codes. Each code works exactly once.
- Seldeo enrolls a new passkey on this device and revokes the old ones, so a passkey sitting on a stolen phone can no longer sign in.
- You're signed in. If you have other devices, add a passkey on each of them next.
No recovery code? Use security questions
If your recovery codes are gone as well, the flow has a fallback:
- Follow steps 1–4 above (recovery email + six-digit code).
- Tap No recovery code? Use security questions.
- Answer the two security questions you set at sign-up. Answers are checked the way you'd hope: close enough isn't enough, so type them the way you originally wrote them.
- On success you're signed in, and the app offers to set up a fresh passkey on this device. Do it immediately.
If you can't clear either path — no recovery code and no security-question match — email support@seldeo.com from your recovery email address and describe the situation. Be prepared for this to be slow; deliberately so.
After you're back in
- Add a second passkey. One passkey is one point of failure. Add one on every device you use — the app recommends keeping at least two.
- Check your recovery setup. Under Settings → Account → Account security, confirm your recovery email is one you still control and your security questions are ones you can still answer.
- Review sessions. If the account was on a stolen device, use Sign out everywhere on the same screen. Recovery already revoked the old passkeys, so the thief cannot sign back in.
Why recovery looks the way it does
Every recovery mechanism is also an attack surface: any path that lets you in without your passkey is a path someone else could try. That's why recovery requires two independent proofs (your inbox and a code or your question answers), why recovery codes are single-use, and why completing recovery revokes every existing passkey. For the independent version of this argument, see the news post Recovery, step-up, and passkeys.