On Sunday, February 18, 2024, Cornell will introduce a secure but more straightforward method for users to recover access to locked Cornell NetID accounts.

Using the new Set Your Recovery Email Address option on the Cornell Manage Your NetID website, a Cornell user can set up a non-Cornell email address to receive a recovery email.

Once the recovery email address has been set, the Forgot My Password option will send an email to the recovery address, letting the user reset the NetID password on their own.

Previously, users needing to recover access to Cornell NetID accounts had to answer security questions, which are easy to forget and have fallen out of favor as an IT best practice, or contact the IT Service Desk to confirm their identity with multiple forms of identification. The recovery email address gives the Cornell community a more straightforward, self-service method for regaining access to a locked account.

To avoid user impact from this transition, existing security questions will continue to work until users set up the recovery email address.