I’ve used Edge extension for more than a year, ticked “remember email”. Problem is I’ve used dedicated email for bitwarden, and cannot remember which email is. So one day, after 2 weeks absence from the laptop, I opened the extension to log in (I remember my password) and I was logged off.
Long story short, months of hard work and very important passwords gone. Lesson learned - backup.
Question is - is there a way to see in cache or something which email I’ve used, or I’m screwed for good?
Can’t you go into the web vault and log in there, trying the several email addresses you have? How many different emails do you have that it can possibly be?
Are you logged in on any other devices (e.g. Chrome on your PC or maybe your phone)? If so, either check its config or use it to create a quick ZIP export (backup).
Did you set your Bitwarden-specific email to forward to a mailbox you routinely monitor? If so, looking at the message headers to something they previously sent will likely reveal the original email address to which a message was destined.
“Backup” is an excellent lesson to have learned. More apropos to this scenario is “Emergency Sheet”. Its purpose is to document the critical bits that allow one to regain access without going full-scale recovery and losing recent changes.
I do understand using a unique email/login to reduce fraudulent login attempts, but a the same time your login-email ought to deliver to a mailbox you routinely monitor so that you get alerts when something unusual does happen. One handy trick for simultaneously achieving both goals is to use plus-addressing.
Unfortunately for you, the browser extension cache no longer stores the email addresses in plaintext (I believe that this was not always the case).
If you ever logged in on any other browser extensions, Desktop apps, or mobile apps that you have not accessed since the forced log-off incident, then disconnect the device from the internet, and subsequently open the app or extension to check if you are still logged in. If so, the unlock screen should display your login email, and you may also be able to unlock your vault to export the data.
If you previously logged in to the Desktop app, but subsequently logged out, then you might be able to retrieve something from the data.json cache (the location of which depends on how you installed the Desktop app).
Finally, if you ever created any whole-disk backups or disk images during the year that you were logged in to your browser extension, then you may be able to use that backup or image to retrieve the lost information.
Other options for recovery will depend on the details of how you created your dedicated email. Do you at least know the service provider, or can you narrow down to a reasonably small set of providers? Was this a forwarding service, or a proper mailbox? Do you think that you would have other email addresses hosted by the same service provider?
Is it possible that they (or their customer service team) would have any records of when your different email addresses were first created (or first used), so that you could check which email addresses were created in the timeframe when you first set up your Bitwarden account?
If you can find an old data.json file for the Desktop app, try opening it using a text editor, and searching for the domain used by your email forwarding addresses.
