If you've received complaints or comments from your email contacts over a suspicious file transfer sent from your address using WeTransfer, it's possible your email account has been compromised.
In order to successfully send an email transfer via our platform, a verification code is required to deliver the files, and without this code, the transfer cannot be made. Verification codes are sent exclusively to the relevant email inbox. This means that if a malicious transfer has been sent using your address and without your knowledge, it is possible that someone else has access to your email account or computer.
An email account can be compromised in many different ways. If you have inadvertently provided your email credentials to a malicious site or you have downloaded malicious software (malware) by mistake or unknowingly when browsing the web, this can lead to unauthorised access to your inbox. A compromised email account can be used for malicious purposes such as sending malware files to your list of contacts. This activity can happen without the legitimate owner of the email account noticing.
Malware exists in many forms and folks can be tricked in downloading the malicious software by invasive pop-up windows or it can be hidden in fake ads as well as phishing emails and phishing websites, designed to confuse and scam a visitor.
One of the most effective measures that you can apply to secure your email account is to enable 2-Factor Authentication, or 2FA. We've got a guide for setting it up on your WeTransfer account but you may need to refer to your email provider's own documentation in order to set up 2FA on your own email account. If you have been infected by a more sophisticated malware a hard factory reset of your computer may be needed. For example, a complete guide of how you can secure a compromised Google email account can be found here.
If this sounds familiar or if you've been made aware of your email address being impersonated to send a malicious email transfer with, please reach out to our Support team here.
We can block your email address entirely. That means your email address cannot be used to send transfers on our service. Blocks on email addresses can be removed at any time via submitting a Support ticket.