This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Primary account email required for sign-in

  • 3 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by user2553693

more options

While trying to sign in to my Firefox account, I get the following error:

"Primary account email required for sign-in"

However, no other e-mail is registered for my account. The problem persists on different browsers as well, signaling that it is related to the account and not the browser. What can I do?

While trying to sign in to my Firefox account, I get the following error: "Primary account email required for sign-in" However, no other e-mail is registered for my account. The problem persists on different browsers as well, signaling that it is related to the account and not the browser. What can I do?

All Replies (3)

more options

Can you login to the Firefox account via this web page?

more options

Thanks for replying! Unfortunately no, I get the same error message.

more options

I've got the same problem in Firefox (even in safe mode), but I can login using Chromium.

I did switch my primary email address some time ago, but I'm getting the error for both my old and new primary email address. This is especially strange since I completely removed my old email address, so it shouldn't even be associated with my account any more. When I did login through Chromium I at first got the error message "This account is not active. If you believe this to be an error, please contact an administrator" (not verbatim). I just tried a second time however and it worked.

I've previously had another problem logging in using Firefox, where it prompted me to type in an email verification code, although I had 2FA with an app enabled. I didn't get any emails, but wasn't prompted for my actual 2FA code either. Again, using Chromium I was correctly prompted for my 2FA code and was able to login. When I tried again about a month later, logging in using Firefox did work again. Not sure if that could be related.

Edit: I just had a look at the difference between the requests in Firefox and Chromium and it looks like for some reason Firefox is sending the parameter 'verificationMethod: "email-otp"', while it's "verificationMethod: "totp-2fa"' in Chromium. I have 2FA with an app enabled, so it makes sense that only the latter would work. Firefox also sends 'originalLoginEmail: "my.old.primary@email.com"'.

So I went into the developer tools and removed all the cache/local/session storage and now everything works fine. It seems the problem is that changes to your account like enabling 2FA or changing your primary email address are not reflected in Firefox' local storage, leading to it making requests using parameters containing the wrong email address or authentication method.

Modified by user2553693