Hi All, I posted this in someone else's thread, but haven't had any advice from anyone who has been through this with Adobe. I'd appreciate anyone who has faced the 'suspicious activity' email to take a read below and let me know their experience.
Very longtime lurker here, thank you for all of the advice and content over the years :)
I received the dreaded account blocked email from Adobe last week, for 'suspicious activity'. I've been through the list of reasons for 'suspicious activity' and I can't see anything that relates to my account.
Some context... I've been a contributor for 6 years, 100% travel photography and video with zero AI. I upload small batches, have around 700 vids and 600 photos in my relatively small port. I withdraw funds as soon as I hit the $25 limit so as not to leave large amounts in the account.
I have had nice, sustainable growth to the account this year, but no 'download bombs' or weird activity with large sales. My last uploads were of a waterfall in the UK, no copyright, releases needed etc.
What I've done so far;
- Logged a support email, received a case number.
- Completed the appeal form they sent me.
- Tried emailing Diego Gomez directly, trial and error email formats but not convinced it arrived. I also found Raul Ceron, but his email came back as deactivated.
I'm not one to sit on my hands if I can speed anything up. Have I missed anything or do I just now have to wait?
If anyone has email addresses for the Adobe Contributor team please let me know, struggling to find anything since Mat moved onto his new position.
Thanks in advance.
My account had stopped uploading for 6 months, until one day they suddenly locked my account due to suspicious activity.
Quote from: tuanbik on May 30, 2026, 11:22
My account had stopped uploading for 6 months, until one day they suddenly locked my account due to suspicious activity.
Did you ever get your account back?
Quote from: Mads82 on May 30, 2026, 11:31
Quote from: tuanbik on May 30, 2026, 11:22
My account had stopped uploading for 6 months, until one day they suddenly locked my account due to suspicious activity.
Did you ever get your account back?
No, six months have passed and there has been no response.
Did you upload multiple similar versions of the same motif. Adobe's rule is generally no more than three significant versions of a single image.
Quote from: tuanbik on May 30, 2026, 11:51
Quote from: Mads82 on May 30, 2026, 11:31
Quote from: tuanbik on May 30, 2026, 11:22
My account had stopped uploading for 6 months, until one day they suddenly locked my account due to suspicious activity.
Did you ever get your account back?
No, six months have passed and there has been no response.
That's awful, I'm so sorry. 6 months with no response is appalling.
Quote from: danielvisuals on May 30, 2026, 11:56
Did you upload multiple similar versions of the same motif. Adobe's rule is generally no more than three significant versions of a single image.
No, the last batch of images I uploaded were taken from the same location but all different shots.
That is just horrible. A reminder to keep uploading to other places for balance.
I hope you hear from them soon.
This kind of situation always reminds me to audit my portfolio and make sure none of my photos or videos could trigger a complaint. It's our responsability to do so.
I've spent the last 2 hours removing metadata with place names that could link my content to specific locations — like national parks that require a permit for commercial shooting — and pulling assets that clearly needed a property release. Most of the issues were from content I submitted early on, before I fully understood the rules and best practices.
Better safe than sorry.
Quote from: cobalt on May 31, 2026, 00:36
That is just horrible. A reminder to keep uploading to other places for balance.
I hope you hear from them soon.
Thank you, it's been quite awful not knowing how long it may be until I hear from them. I upload to around 11 agencies at the moment but there is always going to be one that is the top performer and sadly for me, it's Adobe.
Just as an update for anyone going through this with Adobe right now. I live chatted with their customer facing team this morning, explained the situation but also said I was a paying customer of Adobe Creative Cloud and found it terrible that I had no response from the Contributor team so far.
They said the current target for responding to banned account reviews was 30 days and they would put a note on my profile to check back at this point. We shall see but at least I have something in writing with an expected timeline.
Keep us posted it would be valuable to know if you can resolve it and why they banned your account.
Quote from: Mads82 on June 01, 2026, 12:20
Just as an update for anyone going through this with Adobe right now. I live chatted with their customer facing team this morning, explained the situation but also said I was a paying customer of Adobe Creative Cloud and found it terrible that I had no response from the Contributor team so far.
They said the current target for responding to banned account reviews was 30 days and they would put a note on my profile to check back at this point. We shall see but at least I have something in writing with an expected timeline.
That is a very clever way to go about it. Many of the blocked accounts belong to designers who are Adobe customers. Pointing out how upset you are that you are not getting your account back quickly, is a very good point.
Also makes a difference to the scammers with their 25 family accounts and the real pros actually uploading useful content and then using the sales to pay for the stock media they license for projects.
Hope this issue resolves quickly.