This is the reference version, kept for people who want the full picture. If you just want to protect your account or get back in, start here — it takes two minutes.
In short
If your phone is lost, stolen or dead, your Linxy account is still there and can be recovered. How long that takes depends entirely on one thing: whether you set up a Recovery Mark before it happened. With one, recovery is self-service and takes minutes. Without one, your request goes to a person and you are told to expect an email within one business day.
The uncomfortable part is that every preparation which makes recovery fast — generating a Recovery Mark, naming a guardian, knowing which devices are trusted — can only be done from a signed-in session, which is precisely what you no longer have. Nothing on this page can be arranged after the fact. If you are reading it before anything has gone wrong, the useful section is the last one.
On this page
- Two paths, and yours was chosen earlier
- What to do first
- With a Recovery Mark
- Without one
- Why the code goes only to your own address
- What your guardian does, and does not do
- Signing in on the replacement phone
- The first thing to do once you are back in
- Symptoms, causes and fixes
- Things people commonly get wrong
Two paths, and yours was chosen earlier
Recovery begins the same way for everybody: you go to the account recovery page and give the email address on the account. What happens next depends on whether that account holds an active Recovery Mark.
What to do first
Before starting a recovery at all, work through these in order. Two of them can save you the whole process.
| Step | Why |
|---|---|
| Check whether you still have another signed-in device | A tablet or second phone that is still trusted needs no recovery at all. Sign in there and use your devices list to revoke the missing one immediately |
| Check whether you can reach the account’s email | Every path depends on it. If the inbox is also gone, deal with that first — recovering the mailbox is the harder problem and it blocks everything here |
| Find your printed Recovery Mark | If you have one, recovery is a few minutes away. Have it in front of you before you start, because the code you are sent lasts ten minutes |
| Then start the recovery | From the account recovery page, using the email address on the account |
If the device was stolen rather than mislaid, revoking it is more urgent than recovering your access. Do that from any other trusted device first, even before you have a replacement handset.
With a Recovery Mark
The self-service path has three steps and they are enforced in order — the third is refused outright until the second is finished.
One. You give your email address on the recovery page.
Two. An eight-digit code is sent to that address. It lasts ten minutes and is stored in a form that cannot be read back, so nobody — including support — can look it up and tell you what it was. If it expires, start again.
Three. You present your printed Recovery Mark. In the Linxy App you hold the camera over it and it is read on the device — the picture never leaves your phone. On the website you photograph it and upload the image, which is read on the server. Either way the same checks are applied. It is checked in sequence, stopping at the first failure so the message you get names the actual problem rather than saying something generic. The full ladder of checks is described in Your Recovery Mark; the short version is that the image must be under 25 MB, must actually read, must be a Recovery Mark rather than an ordinary Linxy Mark, and must belong to this account.
| What happens | What it means | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| The mark reads weakly — faded, folded, photocopied, or shot off a screen | Recovery is still approved. The mark is graded and a waiting period is added before the handover completes | Roughly four hours, not your account |
| A different device presented this same mark within the last two days | The attempt is blocked and recorded. This is the protection against somebody who photographed your printed sheet | You must wait, and retry from one device rather than switching between them |
| A blurred or wrong photograph | A failed read. It does not consume any of the mark’s five uses | Nothing. Re-photograph freely |
Without one
If the account has no active Recovery Mark, the recovery page does not fail and does not turn you away. It tells you the request has been passed on and that you should check your email within one business day.
From there identity is established by a person rather than by a photograph, which is slower for the obvious reason: a mark proves possession of a physical object instantly, and in its absence somebody has to be satisfied by other means. Answer the email you receive promptly and from the account’s own address, because a reply from a different mailbox restarts the question the process is trying to settle.
Once you are back in, the first thing worth doing is generating a Recovery Mark so that a second occurrence is a five-minute problem. It is the single highest-value thing on your account settings screen and it takes moments.
Why the code goes only to your own address
The code is sent to the email address on the account and nowhere else. There is no option to send it by text message, and none to send it to a guardian or a colleague. This is deliberate rather than unfinished.
Recovery is meant to require two things of different kinds: something that arrives, and something you already had. The emailed code is the first; the printed mark is the second. Sending the code to a second person would not add a factor — it would duplicate the first one, and make the whole process only as strong as whichever of the two inboxes is easier to reach.
A related design decision shows up if you mistype your address. A recovery started for an address we do not recognize produces the same response as one that has been asked for too many times in a row. The wording is identical on purpose, so that nobody can use the recovery form to discover which email addresses have Linxy accounts. If you are certain the address is right and are still getting a neutral response, wait a while before trying again rather than repeating it.
What your guardian does, and does not do
If you have named a guardian, they are emailed when a recovery is started on your account. That is the entire extent of their involvement, and it is worth being precise about, because people expect a guardian to be a second key holder and then wait for them to do something.
| A guardian | Does this happen? |
|---|---|
| Is told an attempt has started | Yes, by email |
| Approves or refuses the recovery | No. There is nothing for them to approve |
| Receives a code, link or credential | No. The message they get carries nothing usable |
| Is contacted if only a phone number was recorded | No. The alert is email only |
The message they receive says as much in plain terms: it is a heads-up, and a legitimate recovery needs nothing from them. That asymmetry is the design. Because a guardian holds nothing of value, a compromised guardian mailbox is not by itself a way into your account — and because they are told, an attempt you did not start does not go unnoticed.
Signing in on the replacement phone
Once recovery has completed you sign in on the new handset in the ordinary way, using an enrollment link sent to your email. That link has two properties that matter here.
It is single use, so it cannot be reused if the message is later read by somebody else. And it is bound to the device that requested it — opening the link on a different phone will not produce a session. This is the reason access to your inbox alone is not enough to take over an account: the link and the device have to match.
The first thing to do once you are back in
Do these in this order. The first is time-sensitive, the rest are not.
| Do | Why now |
|---|---|
| Open your devices list and revoke the lost handset | Until you do, its key is still valid. Revoking destroys the key immediately and does not require the device to be reachable |
| Look at every other row in that list | Anything you do not recognize, or a last-seen date you cannot account for, deserves revoking on the spot |
| Generate a Recovery Mark, or replace the one you used | A used mark has spent one of its five uses. If you had none, this is the moment to fix that |
| Check the mark you rely on is still printed and legible | Paper you have carried in a wallet for a year is exactly the paper that grades weakly and costs you a four-hour wait |
| Name a guardian if you have not | They cost you nothing and they are how you find out about an attempt you did not make |
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| “Check your email within one business day” | No active Recovery Mark on the account | Nothing to do now. Watch the inbox, reply from the account’s own address |
| The code never arrived | Wrong address, or a spam filter | Check the spam folder, confirm the address, then wait before retrying rather than repeating the request |
| The code stopped working | It lasts ten minutes and is single use | Start again. Have the printed mark ready first so the clock is not spent looking for it |
| “Channel verification must be completed first” | You reached the upload step without entering the code | Enter the emailed code, then upload |
| “This is a content mark, not a Recovery Mark” | An ordinary Linxy Mark was photographed | Find the right sheet. Nothing was spent |
| “Recovery blocked” on the mark step | A different device presented the same mark within two days | Wait and retry from one device. If it was not you, treat the printed copy as compromised and revoke that mark once back in |
| Recovery approved but access is delayed | The mark read weakly and a waiting period was added | Wait it out, then re-print the mark |
| Too many attempts, try later | A temporary lockout after repeated failures | Wait for the period named in the message. Retrying sooner extends nothing but your day |
| The enrollment link will not sign me in | It was opened on a different device from the one that requested it, or it has already been used | Request a new one from the handset you intend to use |