(This question could apply to any tech firm or any website)
When I sign into Hotmail, occasionally I’m on autopilot and enter my master password for my password manager, instead of my Hotmail password. Does Microsoft record this attempt forever, and should I go change my master password each and every time I make this goof? Thanks in advance for any responses.
There’s no way to say for sure unless you work for Microsoft and can see all their logs. There’s no technical barrier to doing so, but there may very well be bureaucratic policies that prevent it from being saved. Who knows?
That said, even if they have your master password, they’re not going to go out of their way to break into your password manager and access your other passwords. I guess there’s a theoretical risk that their logs could be leaked or hacked and someone else could discover it that way, but then yours would just one of the millions and millions of wrong passwords sent a day. Doesn’t seem like it’s worth losing sleep over.
If you’re really worried, change your master password and then use your password manager to autofill the Hotmail password. Why are you typing it in manually to begin with?
If you’re using a dedicated manager, shouldn’t you autofill the passwords anyway?
Most sites log that an attempt was made, and may put a “cooldown” or lock to avoid brute force attempts, but any legitimate company should not store the password itself. Not doing so would put them at risk to have to announce a leak and deal with the fallout, but there’s still some trust on your part that a megacorp does this step.
You may want to change your password regardless if it’s been awhile.
Good responses, thanks.
I don’t use the password manager to autofill, I look up the passwords manually as needed, which is not too often. (On the work computer, I’m not able to install the browser extension even if I wanted to.) For email specifically, the password is memorized, but obviously that’s not a failsafe against typing the wrong one. I do tend to get it right on the second attempt!
Problem for me comes when focus is set on the password field on the webpage, not the password field on my manager. I’ve done this occasionally when 
happens, and I just type into the wrong field. I would be even more worried about accidentally entering a password into the username field, because that is almost certainly saved as plain text in a log someplace.
Paranoia mode: It is possible for a website to record every single keypress on their web page. For example, Discourse might have recorded in the last sentence when I typed “ops 
possible”.
It is best practices to not record passwords in log files, but most likely worst case is that your password is recorded in a log someplace, and deleted as the logs are rotated.
This is one of the reasons to sign up for a (free) service like Have I Been Pwned to inform you when your email is included in a list of passwords.
What Happens When You Type the Wrong PasswordWhen you accidentally type your password manager’s master password into a Microsoft login form:
Microsoft receives it only as a failed login attempt.
The password you typed is transmitted securely (over HTTPS) and then discarded after verification fails.
Microsoft does not store the plaintext password, though it may keep a log that a failed login occurred (for security and fraud monitoring).
So:
Microsoft does not “keep” your mistaken password in a retrievable or readable form.
Should You Change Your Master Password?Usually, no.
If this was just a normal web login attempt on a legitimate Microsoft login page (e.g., https://login.live.com), your master password wasn’t exposed in any meaningful way. It was encrypted in transit and rejected on Microsoft’s end.
However, you should change it immediately if:
You might have entered it on a fake or phishing page (anything that didn’t start with https://login.live.com or https://account.microsoft.com, etc.).
You used a shared or compromised computer/network (like a public Wi-Fi or shared work machine).
You suspect malware or a keylogger could have been running on your device.
Best Practice TipsUse a browser extension or autofill from your password manager to reduce manual typing errors.
Enable 2FA (two-factor authentication) for both your Microsoft account and your password manager.
If you want to double-check, you can view recent sign-in activity in your Microsoft account under
Sign in to your Microsoft account
Summary:
No, Microsoft doesn’t record or retain that password in any usable way, and you don’t need to change your master password every time—unless there’s a chance you typed it somewhere unsafe.
@Omar_Little , what was the point of posting a direct copy-and-paste of AI output? If the OP wanted AI output, they would have asked the AI themself. Repeating what the computer says is not a useful job description.
No. They’ll keep a count of how many failed logins you had in X time period as well as the IP address where the attempt came from, in order to block off intrusion attempts, but there’s no incentive for them to retain incorrectly entered passwords. Stop worrying about this and don’t think about it anymore.
Although it’s true that any company could store plaintext passwords from failed logins, it would be costly to store all that data, and no benefit to doing so, and potentially a security liability. All downside, no upside. Microsoft isn’t dumb enough to do that on purpose, and it would be shocking if somehow they managed to do it on accident.
The mistyped-password security breach that I worry about is that occasionally I type the password where I should be typing my username. And I occasionally have to type a password to log into something on my smartboard, which means it’s in view of my students. So there’s the chance of my students accidentally seeing me type my password, in the clear.
Still probably not a serious threat, since they’d have to be paying very close attention to first notice what I was doing, and then to remember the exact string that I typed, faster than I could realize what I was doing and delete it. But it’s at least theoretically possible.