Member Avatar for pdunning

Any help would be greatly appreciated for the following problem:
Last week I couldn't log in to my hotmail account as it rejected my password, ( which I have been using for the last 5 years). I had to login by using the "Provide account information and answer your secret question" and creating a new password. Now however it rejects my password and comes up with a secret question that I did not use. Has my account been hijacked? How can I get it back? Unfortunately I have a huge amount of information on this account that is valuable to me ( and others I suppose ). Many thanks for any replies.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by dlh6213
Member Avatar for DMR

That does sound like a classic webmail account hijack, and unfortunately- you may be up the proverbial river in terms of getting it back.

If it really is a hijack, the person responsible has probably not only changed your password and "secret question", but has aslo altered your personal account information as well. That means that you won't be able to prove that you're really the account owner when you call Microsoft regarding the problem.

Even if that's the case, contacting Micorsoft is still the first thing you should do, and you should do it ASAP. In all honesty, there isn't much else you can do in terms of rectifying the problem and/or closing the account; all of your information lives on the HotMail servers, after all.

Member Avatar for dlh6213

...as it rejected my password, ( which I have been using for the last 5 years).

Just for future referecence, your password should be changed at least annually, and more often would be even better. It wouldn't hurt to change your secret question as well, and give a response that cannot be easily found out (for example, if the question is your mother's maiden name, instead of giving her actual maiden name, use her middle name or something more difficult to obtain or figure out).

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