P: Unusual Account Activity Detected popup in Photoshop

[Darrell Stokes]

My partner is getting this modal popup blocking her activity in Photoshop v 25.5—but not in any other CC apps. It feels like a phishing scam, but could just be a bad design. She didn't follow the links (Learn more and Sign out) in the modal. She has deactivated access on other machines, and deleted and reinstalled Photoshop. The message still appears.

Has anyone else seen this before?

[kevin stohlmeyer]

@Darrell Stokes This is legit. Do you each have a subscription for Photoshop? You are allowed to install on as many computers as you want but only one can be open/active at a time. Sounds like sharing access might be catching up.

[Darrell Stokes]

@kevin stohlmeyer  Thanks for confirming that it's legit. I couldn't find anything about it in any Adobe help docs, and the design made me expect it to request a Walmart gift card. 😂

We don't share an Adobe ID, but each of us uses it on two computers. She had quit Photoshop on her second computer, but to no avail. The ony thing that worked was to deactivate, uninstall and reinstall it on the second computer. So it seems it somehow wasn't getting the message to the mothership that it wasn't running on the second machine.

[Darrell Stokes]

Ok, false positive—it just happened again, and she doesn't even have Photoshop activated on any other computer now. Back to the drawing board.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

@Darrell Stokes sounds like her account has been compromised and someone is actually using it somewhere else. Try changing the password and set up two factor authentication.

You can also check account activity here: https://account.adobe.com/security

[Michelle29831425vnse]

Hello. Yes. I have the same issue. I spent almost 4 hours with technical support in a chat last night. He tried so many different ways to try to resolve it. He did a remote session on my laptop and used the Creative Cloud cleaner tool but it didn't work. He said he checked with another team and other people were experiencing this issue and said they were working to resolve it. He said that I should 24 hours and try again. That was 9 hours ago. I still received it this morning but now it's saying I'll lose access to the app in 4 days. I better not. I use this for my business. My laptop is new, has antivirus/antimalware, VPN. We disabled the VPN and it didn't help. When I looked at my account, in the security settings, there are 3 connections. It lets me end 2 of the 3 (one of which is my laptop) but I can't remove this other instance that it thinks is me. I asked the support rep if there was any way we could kill that connection. He said no. I sent him sysinfo from my machine so he could see the hostname of my laptop, he watched me log into my machine with 2FA and a passkey. He tried to tell me someone else was using my account! I told him how can that be? I'm using 2FA, passkey, password which I reset earlier in the day when this error began popping up. I think that somehow the connections that Creative Cloud makes to their servers is hosed up and thinks I've tried using the app over 3 connections that are not properly terminated? That's my guess. I haven't tried Ai or InDesign but I will later today. I'll update the thread if my issue gets resolved. The support rep said that if, after 24 hours, the issue isn't resolved, to open another chat and they would be happy to help.

[Michelle29831425vnse]

I forgot to mention that it's the same 3 connections every time it happens. I'm quite certain they are all me. 2 are listed as Chrome connections and one is from my new laptop. I even uninstalled the Adobe PDF extension from Chrome thinking that might be contributing to the issue but it didn't help. What I don't like is that it keeps hanging onto this one old connection from February, which isn't even the right connection. It lets me end the one for my laptop and the other Chrome connection. I also have a password that is more than 20 characters long and I doubt anyone is using it, since I reset it, use 2FA, a passkey directly from my laptop. I've worked in IT for over 25 years and am very careful with my security.   🙂

[Michelle29831425vnse]

I meant, log into Adobe with a username, passkey and password. I'm sorry. I am tired this morning.

[ashforthmarketing]

After using Photoshop 25.5.1 for five minutes, an error message with "Unusual Account Activity Detected" at the top appears in a red bar. This is a known bug – just got off a 40 minute call with Adobe application support. The current workaround is to click the "Unusual Account Activity Detected" title in the red bar which will open up an Adobe web page. You can close the web page and return to Photoshop and the error message should be gone. I've been able to continue working in Photoshop without the message returning. Once I close the application and reopen it, the message appears again after five minutes.

If you have two monitors, as I do, there's an extra twist. When I run Photoshop in the second monitor (a larger monitor attached to my MacBook Pro), the error message doesn't appear in the middle of the screen – it appears off the screen and can only be seen when I click F3 (Expose view). Then I can see it off to the side of the main Photoshop window. In this case, Photoshop itself is frozen and only makes a dull sound when trying to click on anything. The only way to get past it is to force quit Photoshop.

Apparently, there is another known issue related to this that appears on your Adobe account web page. Under Account and Security > Sign-in and security, if you scroll to the bottom, you'll see Active Sessions. You may be seeing a phantom session (I am) called "Safari, Mac OS X 10.15.7" labeled as the "Current session". This session cannot be ended or deleted in any way. The Adobe support rep said he and his team would look into it because it is not real and is related in some way to this Photoshop error message issue.

ALSO (yes, there's more), in that same Active Sessions section, the session identified with my computer's name shows a location of "Unknown". This too is a bug. Good times had by all.

Fingers crossed Adobe can straighten all this out. I will say the Adobe support rep was wonderful and patient and very apologetic. 

_____

Photoshop 25.5.1

macOS Sonoma 14.3.1

MacBook Pro M3 Max

[Kyphotos32]

I am having the same problem.. I have signed out of all of my accounts and changed my password and nothing has helped. i just started getting the error message out of the blue. When i called Adobe non of the steps the had me todo worked.  the message is telling me that i am going to losse my account in 4 days. Adobe is saying the i will be fixed in 24hrs which is BS because they have told other people the same thing and they are still having problems after the 24hr wait. 

[DavidLloydImageworks]

 

Yes, I am getting this. First contact with chat support made me feel like a criminal, but then said that I should log out of all devices and change my password. that didnt change anything, kept getting it, but now it says "you will lose access to this Adobe app in 4 days" called support and got shuffled over to Photoshop because that is the only app this is happening in. Phone support said that they were getting A LOT of these calls and that it was on thier radar... and that I should not worry... I wass like "um... when you threaten to take away my livelyhood in 4 days, I am going to worry!"

I logged out all devices in the adobe creative cloud online page. I did not see any unexpected activity. I changed my password. Anyway, they say that I should not be cut off in 4 days, but we will see.

[DavidLloydImageworks]

The warning may be legit, but I do not believe that the sharing access is. The support team that I talked to last kept saying over and over again that they have been inundated by calls about this. My suspicion is that they started tightening the security and inadvertently looped in hundreds(+) of customers that are very legit. I know I have never shared my login, I have always had 2 factor set up. I checked my device login in my account settings and there were no unusual activity. I never use 2 computers at the same time. AND the screen says I will lose access in 4 days... but only in photoshop when I subscribe to Creative Cloud All Apps (since creation), Substance 3D Collection and Adobe Stock.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Thanks for the update @DavidLloydImageworks fingers crossed its resolved soon!

[evanlogan1]

Same issue. Support solutions have not been any help. I've always had 2-factor and never allowed anyone else to use my account. I have had it activated on 2 computers, but currently just one.

[gener7]

I setup a new (used) Macbook yesterday. In the process of using Photoshop, I got the "too many devices" popup, but my one shows me the three Macs I am signed into, and gives me the option of signing out of one of them. I sign out of one of them and I'm back in business. This is what the dialog  should look like.

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/using/device-activation-limit.html

Not being tech savvy on what could be the problem, perhaps work with them on deleting the old account and creating a new one.

[DavidLloydImageworks]

 Day 3... dealing with teh countdown and the billable hours lost... and I love how there is no way to move the widget to get to the buttons

[DavidLloydImageworks]

Got this last night. I changed my password and signed out of all active logins immediatly yesterday, to no avail. I still get the countdown notices constantly. 

 

 

 

[Michelle29831425vnse]

Yep. Same here. I feel your pain.

Now, the error message says I'll lose access to Photoshop in 2 days. My subscription payment is due tomorrow, too.

I had another support session yesterday and the same thing - log out of everything, reset password, reboot, wait 24 hours. This isn't working. They closed my ticket. I did a complete uninstall of all Adobe apps on my laptop and 2 other laptops that weren't powerful enough to run all the stuff I need for my business. But I did a full uninstall on those and shut them down. Same problem occurred today.

It's been 22 hours since my chat yesterday with support. I tried to re-open my case by replying to the 'case closed' email I got but it bounced back and said to use the chat. I'm going to ask if I can just cancel this subscription and create a new one instead.

I can't afford the downtime and business lost. I like the Adobe apps but I'm going to install GIMP and Inkscape as a backup or maybe I'll bite the bullet and buy Corel Draw and write it off. The thing is that I've been running the Adobe apps on this new laptop since December. IDK why, all of a sudden, I'm having this issue now. I'm more than frustrated. I'll update my original post if anything changes.

[Michelle29831425vnse]

You're lucky it worked. Mine shows 3 connections. The current session can't be deleted, only the 2 other sessions can be - one of which is my laptop which IS running the Adobe suite of products - the other two don't even have the Adobe software installed and are shut down. I don't know why I or they can't delete the one 'current' connection that's blocking me - they just said they can't. I'm glad you're up and running, though! 🙂

[kevin stohlmeyer]

It doesnt matter if the hardware is powered off/shut down. The account can still be allocated to the machine.

[Conrad C]

I got this error yesterday too. I’m not new to Creative Cloud so I followed the directions and both closed all Creative Cloud sessions on all devices and browsers and also changed my password, since it had been a few years since I last did that. But then a little while later later the error appeared again. I was pretty sure the new password wasn’t already compromised because I also use multi-factor authentication as another layer of security.

The fact that no other Adobe app was complaining made me think it was probably a Photoshop-only glitch we would have to sit through until they fixed it. I left Photoshop running for a couple hours today and have not seen the message come back. So my guess is that it was a temporary server-based problem affecting only Photoshop, that some people got hit with regardless of how well they were following the rules with a non-compromised account.

It’s just unfortunate that this caused many of us to spend valuable time running around resetting accounts and passwords that we probably did not actually have to do.

[Anna35948411g2tm]

Hi, I can't start photoshop, it asks me to log out of the other devices, but I'm only logged in on one.
What should i do?

[Ged_Traynor]

@Anna35948411g2tm go to your Adobe account and check the active devices, you can deactivate devices from there, if needs be

https://account.adobe.com/

[CobieFrench]

I am running Photoshop 25.5.1 on macOS Sonoma 14.1. I use my Creative Cloud subscription on 2 different computers - a personal Macbook and a Mac Studio at work. I accidentally left Photoshop open on my Macbook while I was at work and I got an error message saying I could only use Photoshop on one computer at a time. No big deal. I logged out of my Creative Cloud remotely through Adobe.com. I was still getting the error message. I chatted with Adobe Support and I have changed my password, restarted my computer, and uninstalled/reinstalled all of my Creative Cloud apps, but none of it has worked. Adobe Support has been incredibly unhelpful and they tell me to send them a screenshot of the error everytime saying that they will follow up in email. However, the only emails they have sent say that my case is open and to let them know if I need anything else. At this point it has been 3 days and I am fed up with Adobe. I just paid my monthly subscription on March 4th. I'm scared I am going to lose my Creative Cloud files if this error messageis true. Has anyone else had this problem? 

[kevin stohlmeyer]

@CobieFrench most of us on here are hoping this is just a glitch/false flag - so far no one has reported actually losing access.

[Conrad C]

I'm scared I am going to lose my Creative Cloud files if this error messageis true

By @CobieFrench

One thing to keep in mind: Any Creative Cloud files you created and which are stored on your own computer will still be there even if something happens to the subscription. Apps do not get automatically uninstalled, and documents are not automatically deleted. If this problem continues, the main issue is that the applications won’t run.

If you are specifically using Photoshop Cloud Documents (which are only stored on cloud servers), maybe those would go away but there might be a grace period.