Hey everyone, I'm in a bit of a mess with my AWS account. I primarily use AWS Lightsail but I've completely forgotten both the email address and the password for my root account. As an IAM user, I'm hitting a wall trying to start my Lightsail server because I'm getting an "It looks like you aren't authorized" error. I think the user permissions need adjustment, but without root access, I'm stuck. Here's what I've tried so far: I've gone through the standard "Forgot Password" route, but that requires the root email, which I just don't remember. I've also contacted AWS support under my Basic Support Plan and opened a case for account access issues. The initial response was pretty generic, telling me to use the "Forgot Password" link, which is again impossible for me right now. I responded to the case explaining my situation but I'm still waiting for a personal reply. I even tried the call support option, but I keep getting an error about invalid parameters. Has anyone experienced this before? Any suggestions on what I can do next?
5 Answers
It can be a real challenge if both the root account email and MFA access are lost. AWS mentions in their help articles that the recovery process might be nearly impossible in such cases. I had a customer once who lost access too, and they had admin permissions on some other accounts, so they managed to keep things going, but they just couldn't recover the root account. It's a tough situation, as AWS doesn't allow ownership transfer from a lost root account, so maybe they're considering starting fresh with a new account altogether.
Have you checked if your IAM account has the ability to create or manage policies? If that’s the case, you could add admin policies to your IAM user and manage resources temporarily while you work on the root account issue.
Sorry to hear you’re going through this! If you could share your case ID via chat with AWS support, they might be able to dig deeper into your issue.
If they're being unhelpful, you might want to get a notarized letter stating you own the account and send that in. Sometimes that can prompt support to take action they otherwise wouldn't.
Good luck! I mean, I hope you find a way through this, but don’t get your hopes too high. It's a tough lesson learned about keeping track of passwords—maybe consider using a password manager in the future? Also, think about creating a bastion IAM user specifically for recovery situations like this. They can help with resets and occasionally grant temporary admin permissions, but without the root creds, it's a major hurdle.
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