[Email Hacked/Compromised] Important I Get It Back

.red

I was at work today when I received texts from my friends telling me my email was sending out strange emails. By the time I got home, my account had been blocked by msn and was telling me that I had to "recover" it. It keeps sending me to a "send code" link wherein the only option available is an email that is partially covered via asterisks (I suspect for privacy reasons), but the email does not look familiar (I usually use gmail as a secondary email, not hotmail ones).

I have no idea what to do as there is no alternate solution (i.e talking to customer support) available as a secondary option, and I'm practically freaking out because I have some important information kept in there that I need to have access too within the next few days. Has anyone had this problem and solved it?

dispatch.o

.red wrote:

I was at work today when I received texts from my friends telling me my email was sending out strange emails. By the time I got home, my account had been blocked by msn and was telling me that I had to "recover" it. It keeps sending me to a "send code" link wherein the only option available is an email that is partially covered via asterisks (I suspect for privacy reasons), but the email does not look familiar (I usually use gmail as a secondary email, not hotmail ones).

I have no idea what to do as there is no alternate solution (i.e talking to customer support) available as a secondary option, and I'm practically freaking out because I have some important information kept in there that I need to have access too within the next few days. Has anyone had this problem and solved it?

Why cant you contact the email provider?

Foomy

By your mention of msn I'm assuming your talking about a windows live id thats been blocked?
if so go to https://login.live.com/ than click the "can't access your account" link under the password box
Select, forgot your password, than the reset option, fill in your id and the captcha. than select the custome support option.
it will have you fill in a bunch of personal information and things about your email, if you fill in enough info correctly than you should get a password reset link sent to an email addy you supply.
this will also unblock your account.

.red

Foomy wrote: »

By your mention of msn I'm assuming your talking about a windows live id thats been blocked?
if so go to https://login.live.com/ than click the "can't access your account" link under the password box
Select, forgot your password, than the reset option, fill in your id and the captcha. than select the custome support option.
it will have you fill in a bunch of personal information and things about your email, if you fill in enough info correctly than you should get a password reset link sent to an email addy you supply.
this will also unblock your account.

Thank you this was what I was supposed to do right on!

I've no idea how I got compromised considering how little I use the internet, but that was one ordeal I don't wanna deal with again. Had the email since 2k5 but I think it's time I migrated over to make gmail my primary instead of my secondary.

Psychotic One

Change password + change security questions + check to see if there are any associated emails tied to the account in case the person left a "backdoor" to recover the password after you change it again.

fightinfilipino

and use a more secure password. whoever got in may have just used a brute-force dictionary attack and got in if your password was too easy.

use special characters in your password (like "!" or "@" or others), vary your password with numbers, and don't use dictionary words. you could try using a passphrase, which is basically making up a phrase you'll remember and then creating the password out of the first letter of each word in the phrase.

Heir

fightinfilipino wrote: »

and use a more secure password. whoever got in may have just used a brute-force dictionary attack and got in if your password was too easy.

use special characters in your password (like "!" or "@" or others), vary your password with numbers, and don't use dictionary words. you could try using a passphrase, which is basically making up a phrase you'll remember and then creating the password out of the first letter of each word in the phrase.

To be fair, password length matters much more than having special characters for brute force:

http://xkcd.com/936/