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Deactivating or reactivating someone's account

This page explains how to deactivate an account if someone is arrested or loses their phone or other device used to access our services. Group admins are able to deactivate their account.

See Compromised Account Procedure for precautions to take when access to an account is compromised.

Deactivating an account

Find the person whose account you're looking to deactivate by going to your group, opening the Members dropdown list and clicking on the person.

Click on the green Deactivate User link.

Enter the reason for deactivating the user, and click Yes.

The user will immediately be removed from all UK private teams on Mattermost, and their accounts on the Hub, Forums and Cloud will be deactivated. A message will also be sent to the global Mattermost admins asking then to deactivate the Mattermost account.

If the user has a vault account for the same email address as they currently have on the Hub, it will also be deactivated.

Reactivating an account

Do not reactivate the account of someone you do not know personally.

And, of course, make sure :

  • They really have been released, and have all their devices back
  • Their email address has not been compromised

If in any doubt, do not reactivate until their email address on the Hub and all other services has been changed to a new, uncompromised address. To do that, obtain their current Mattermost password, and ask your regional Hub Admin, or request in the Hub Help Desk on Mattermost.

Follow the same steps as outlined above – where previously the link would have said Deactivate User, it should now say Reactivate User. Clicking this link will bring up the confirmation screen:

Click Yes to reactivate them. The user will immediately be rejoined to all their UK private teams on Mattermost, and their accounts on the Hub, Forums and Cloud will be reactivated. A message will also be sent to the global Mattermost admins asking then to reactivate the Mattermost account.

If they are a member of Mattermost channels which the Hub does not know about, their membership of those channels will not be restored automatically. They need to rejoin them "by hand", by asking people in the channel to join them again.

If the user has a vault account for the same email address as they currently have on the Hub, it will also be reactivated.