This article is currently an experimental machine translation and may contain errors. If anything is unclear, please refer to the original Chinese version. I am continuously working to improve the translation.
2026/04/24 Update: After nearly 20 days of waiting, my account has finally been restored—login is back, but Actions remain unavailable. I’ve also come up with a potentially viable migration plan; stay tuned for my upcoming blog post about Git.
Long story short: my GitHub account @lyc8503 was suspended by GitHub without any prior notice or explanation. All public repositories, my profile page, and GitHub Pages are currently inaccessible, returning 404s. I myself cannot log in or access any data.
Since many people have been reaching out via email and other channels asking what’s going on, I’m writing this blog post to clarify the situation. Additionally, my original homepage at www.lyc8503.net, which was hosted on GitHub Pages, is now 302-redirected here. Don’t worry—I haven’t vanished. I’m actively working on resolving this.
To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t violated any GitHub ToS, and as of now (2026/04/05), I haven’t received any notification emails from GitHub. I strongly suspect this is a false positive from GitHub’s internal systems. I’ve already filed a support ticket requesting account restoration, but the response time remains unknown.
I’ve heard that GitHub’s response time for free accounts can be extremely slow—sometimes over a week, or even up to one or two months. If you work at GitHub/Microsoft, have access to internal feedback channels, or hold a GitHub Pro/Enterprise subscription with Standard/Premium Support access and are willing to help me recover my account, please contact me at me@lyc8503.net. My ticket ID is #4243072.
Timeline
2026/04/03 11:11 UTC+8
My student email suddenly received 4 emails from [email protected], with the following content:
I did apply for the GitHub Education Student Developer Pack in 2022 and again in 2024, using legitimate student credentials that were approved at the time. Those benefits have long expired. I have no idea why GitHub is sending me these emails years later, so I ignored them.
Account Status Abnormal: 2026/04/03 11:15 UTC+8
Just four minutes after receiving those confusing emails, my monitoring system alerted me that my GitHub Pages site was returning 404s—my account was likely already compromised. However, I was at work and didn’t notice the alert.
2026/04/03 19:48 UTC+8
On my subway commute home, someone messaged me asking why my repositories were unreachable.
I checked my phone and found my GitHub account had been logged out. After re-entering my credentials, I was greeted with a suspension notice—no further actions allowed.
I immediately checked my inbox—besides the mysterious emails from earlier, GitHub had sent nothing else. No warning, no explanation—just silent termination of my account and repositories.
I clicked the “Contact Support” button. After entering my email and receiving a verification code, the system told me my account was flagged and I must verify a phone number to proceed. However, GitHub’s SMS service doesn’t support Chinese mainland (+86) or Hong Kong (+852) numbers. My primary phone couldn’t pass verification.
2026/04/03 20:04 UTC+8
Fortunately, I happened to have my UK (+44) backup SIM with me. I used it to complete SMS verification and finally submitted a support ticket, stating I had no idea why I was suspended and requesting a review and reinstatement.
After submission, I received a confirmation email from GitHub Support: [GitHub Support] Confirmation - Request Received (#4243072).
2026/04/04 19:35 UTC+8
Still no response after 24 hours. Due to the suspension, downstream projects relying on my repositories started failing. More and more people reached out through various channels. I replied to the support ticket, emphasizing the urgency and requesting priority handling—though I have no idea if that actually helps.
2026/04/05 15:15 UTC+8
GitHub still hasn’t responded. Considering it’s not even a business day, I have no idea when they’ll get to this. I’m publishing this blog post to reach a broader audience, explain the situation, and seek any possible assistance.
2026/04/12 17:10 UTC+8
Still no reply. Following GitHub’s documentation, I emailed [email protected] and [email protected] requesting a data export.
2026/04/20 00:02 UTC+8
Still no response.
Account Login Restored: 2026/04/24 07:15 UTC+8
Woke up to a bunch of emails from GitHub—the later ones were regular issue notifications, but the first was a reply from GitHub Support:
2026/04/24 08:03 UTC+8
Monitoring shows my GitHub Pages are back online. I logged in around 10 AM to check—seems mostly fine at first glance.
2026/04/25 21:51 UTC+8
But it’s not over yet… I noticed my repository Actions weren’t running. When I tried triggering one manually, I got this error:
I replied to the GitHub ticket, reporting the billing issue and requesting full reinstatement.
2026/05/01 00:20 UTC+8
Still waiting for a reply… and yes, the new Git migration article is still being written!
Impact and Future Plans
Thank you all for your concern and private messages. No need to worry too much—I have local clones and multiple backups of nearly all my code. While I can’t publicly distribute new code right now, my development workflow remains intact, and there’s no actual data loss.
The main impact is on collaborative features: GitHub Issues, Pull Requests, Releases, and Wikis are all locked. I can’t interact with users or contributors, and even my blog’s comment system (powered by giscus) is broken. Worse, GitHub won’t let me export my data, so direct migration elsewhere isn’t possible right now. My last GitHub data export was in September last year—half a year ago—so the backup is likely too outdated to be useful. I’m stuck waiting for GitHub to fully restore my account.
To be honest, I’ve considered the possibility of losing access to my GitHub account before—due to geopolitical issues, credential theft, etc.—but I never expected GitHub itself to pull this kind of random, unexplained suspension.
This is an awful user experience, and honestly, it’s a wake-up call: migration needs to be prioritized. The core features—Git hosting, GitHub Actions, Pages, package registry—are actually quite easy to migrate. I could just set up a self-hosted Gitea or Forgejo instance on an overseas server and replicate most functionality.
The harder part is the community. If I self-host, every contributor would need to register on my instance to open PRs or file issues. I’d have to manage user accounts, which sounds like a nightmare and would likely deter many potential contributors. ForgeFed, based on ActivityPub, might be a solution—if instances like Codeberg support federation, migration could be much smoother. But right now, ForgeFed is still experimental and far from widely adopted.
I’ll keep researching to find a balance between usability and self-hosting. Stay tuned for https://git.lyc8503.net
This article is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Author: lyc8503, Article link: https://blog.lyc8503.net/en/post/github-account-suspended/
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