Why do I get an email alert stating "A third-party application accessed your Zoho account"?
Third-party apps are external applications that you use by signing in with your Zoho account. These applications include mail clients, calendar clients, and others.
Zoho will send you notification emails to inform you of third-party apps accessing your account.
These emails will be sent:
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Whenever your account is signed in to a new third-party app.
-
Whenever an already signed-in third-party app accesses your account (i.e., for fetching emails or updating calendar) from a new location.
Note
: The location shown in the email is approximated based on the accessed IP address. So, it may not be accurate and may vary from the actual location.
Whenever your account is accessed from a new app or location, an email alert will be sent and it will be added under the Device Sign-ins section in your Zoho Account. Once a location is added, we will not send you an alert for further access from that location, unless you manually remove that location from Mail Client Sign-ins listed under Device Sign-ins.
This is done to alert you of any suspicious access to your account. However, this alert doesn't necessarily mean your account is accessed by a malicious agent. There are cases when the accessed IP address will be different from your actual IP address, and since our account servers detect account activity from an unusual location, we will send you this email.
Non-malicious cases when such emails could be sent
As informed in this article earlier, this alert will be sent when you sign in to a new third-party app or when an already signed-in app accesses your account from a new location.
However, in the cases mentioned below, the actual location from which you sign in or the app accesses your account will be the same as your current location (i.e., one of your usual locations). But the location that gets shared with our account servers will be different. Because of that, we will send you this email. These cases are not of malicious nature and the email sent can be ignored.
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Some third-party apps' servers may route traffic using a range of IP addresses (for scaling and privacy reasons). Hence, when the app accesses your account, it will share a dynamic server IP address with our account servers instead of your actual IP address.
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If you have enabled iCloud Private Relay in your Apple devices, your actual IP address won't be shared. Instead, a different IP address will be shared. Learn more
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If you were connected to a VPN network that changes its IP address at periodic intervals.
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If you get connected to a new mobile network or public network (which could happen when you travel).
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The IP address of your mobile network could change whenever you get connected to that network, as IP address assignment is based on your network provider.
In all these cases, the location that gets shared with us will be an unusual location due to the change in IP address, and hence, an email will be sent.
What to do if you receive this email
If you are sure that the alert could be triggered because of the above reasons, you can safely ignore this email.
In case you are still suspicious, do the following (based on whether you have configured multi-factor authentication or not):
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If you haven't enabled MFA:
Reset your Zoho account password. And, if you are using app-specific passwords, generate new ones and use them for your third-party apps.
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If you have enabled MFA:
Generate new app-specific passwords and use them for your third-party apps, and delete your old passwords.
If you want further clarification or assistance, write to us at
support@zohoaccounts.com
.
Info
: For third-party apps, it is more secure to use app-specific passwords instead of your account password. App-specific passwords help you to avoid having your account password getting collected or stored by third-party apps. Even if an app password gets exposed, your account will not be compromised.
How to stop getting these emails
If you would like to stop receiving these email alerts, you can disable it from your account's Preferences.
- Go to accounts.zoho.com.
- Go to Settings from the left menu.
- In Preferences, under Email Notifications, disable Third-party app access alert.
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