I recently lost access to my Hotmail account for a few days. I have a few email accounts, but I use that one for my bank accounts, bills, Venmo, etc. I was able to get back in this morning – I can still feel the relief rolling through me.
I’ve installed the Microsoft Authenticator app on my phone, which will hopefully be more reliable in terms of not locking me out. I’ve set up forwarding from my Hotmail to a brand new Gmail account, so if I lose access again, I’ll still get the emails at least.
Other than scattering my credit cards, bank accounts, utilities to many different email accounts, which will be confusing and annoying, is there anything else I should be doing to make sure that I never lose access again, or if I do, I don’t lose everything?
Add another email there as a backup. Add your phone number. Add a passkey (or several). Then you’ll have redundant ways of signing in and verifying ownership.
If you truly want to “own” your own email address and not be at Microsoft’s mercy, though, you’ll have to be willing to change your email address and rent your own domain name like @rittersport.com
When you say that you ‘lost access’ to your hotmail account for a few days, I assumed you meant there was a problem with the service, but it sounds like a credential issue on your end. Which was it? If you’re worried about hotmail having issues, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Forwarding all your emails elsewhere may or may not work depending on what’s going on behind the scenes. OTOH, if the issue is you losing your password, then your answer is finding a way to save your password. I’ve been a big fan of Bitwarden since I started using it a while back. Remember the password for bitwarden and it remembers the passwords for everything else.
IMO, your best bet is to use something like bitwarden and make sure you have a recovery email and phone number set up so you can get back into your account in 30 seconds instead of several days.
You can also stay signed on multiple browsers or computers, along with the Outlook desktop app. That way if you’re ever signed out on one of them, hopefully some of the others will still be logged in (especially the Outlook app, which saves its credentials less volatilely than a web browser would). You can also install the Outlook mobile app.
That option is a lot less useful than it once was.
Unless you’re an IT maven, you’ll probably find that the email host company you use won’t be properly configured so your outgoing email will pass anti-spam muster at your recipients when it’s coming from your email address but also from the company’s server. When those things don’t match, and your anti-spam DNS records aren’t properly configured, your outgoing email just disappears.
As well, you’re at the mercy of how thoroughly that ISP prevents anyone else using their servers as bulk mailers or spam sources. If their server gets a bad reputation, your outgoing email gets thrown away by your recipients with no notice to you nor any way for you to affect their policies.
Returning to the OP … yeah, I’d like to know in detail what the OP means by “I lost access”. All good remedies flow from knowing the actual source of the actual problem.
It’s true, but for the purpose of “I need a mailbox to receive all my account information for other services”, it’s probably fine. Especially if you get it hosted at Gmail, Fastmail, Microsoft, etc.
I wouldn’t use that as my primary email for communicating with humans, but for receiving automated notices, that would ensure you have ultimate control over it (as long as you buy the domain name separately from the email hosting).
Here’s how I lost access. I got a new Windows build and decided to use that address for my sign in. Typed in the email address, and had it send a code to my phone. Went to my phone, matched the number…“Something went wrong.” OK, try my password instead – typed in the password word correctly (or just once anyway) and got the message: “You’ve had too many failed password attempts.”
OK, remain calm. Try again, same problem. OK, reset the password – I get the code at my recovery email address, change the password successfully, go to log in…“You’ve had too many failed password attempts.”
Uh, I just changed the password. How is that possible. Panic starts to build, try a few more times until I get the message “You’ve reset your password too many times. Wait 24 hours to try again.”
Wait a day, but maybe not a full 24 hours, use the last password I tried – “You’ve had too many failed password attempts.” Note, each time, it was after entering the correct password once, but even if it was incorrect, it was the first time after changing the password that I got that message.
On some forums, it says it can take a day or two for the account to unlock, so I wait two days and do it again – reset the password, and this time it worked. Whew!
BTW, along the way, I also couldn’t get into my password keeper – that logged me out on my phone for the first time in more than a year. So, I had it send me my password hint, which, of course, goes to that same hotmail account.
So, I spent a few days with no access to my main email account and no access to my password keeper.
All along, I would get email previews on my phone, even though the app had logged me out. No idea how that worked.
Anyway, that’s the long and sordid tale about how I lost access. Here’s a recent thread about a similar or the same issue:
It’s not necessarily you, by the way. This can happen if bots keep trying to log in to your Hotmail with the wrong password.
I had the same thing happen to me earlier this week, for a Hotmail account I’ve had for 30+ years that I almost never use (and have kept the same password for forever). It actually happens with some frequency, and when it does, I have to either wait a day or two or use an alternative login (passkey, etc.) to get back in. I am 100% certain I didn’t lose the password or try to log in; someone else (or probably an army of robot someone elses) keeps trying to login with the wrong password, in effect constituting a denial of service against the account.
You can check to see if your Hotmail was in that leak or any others at https://haveibeenpwned.com/. If so, it’s entirely possible that bots will keep trying it forever and forever.
But you can usually bypass the password lockout using one of the other sign-in methods. At least that’s how I’ve gotten back in without having to wait for the full reset duration.
Yeah, I got a note from Have I Been Pwned at both my main hotmail and gmail accounts.
I initially tried that other method (send a code to my phone), but I think their server was down (“Something went wrong” led to “Couldn’t connect to server” when I asked for more info).
I was thinking that maybe a bot was trying to get in and just trying password after password, so seconds after I changed it, I had too many failed attempts again. I really hope the Microsoft Authenticator will make this better.
I wish Have I Been Pwned would tell me what password was leaked, because then I would know if it’s an old one, or a bad one, or whatever. People use my gmail address in error all the time, so it could easily be one of their accounts.
It should. If I were you I’d also add a passkey, which allows your computer to self-authenticate without needing your phone (just so there’s one fewer point of failure / one additional redundant login method).
The passkey would coexist with the Microsoft Authenticator.
If that were the case, wouldn’t it show up in your Outlook security settings [account. live. com / Activity] as a series of failed logins?
The Microsoft page that @RitterSport linked to says a patch was recently introduced in the software, after which many users reported login problems. I’m guessing that is the cause. (I’ve had this same problem with my Outlook account for a couple weeks.)
Hotmail is ancient. I’d create a new outlook.com account and transfer all of the stuff you’re now doing with your hotmail account to that. My SiL had a hotmail account, and that’s what I had her do a couple of years ago or so.
ISTM Microsoft is running Hotmail.com, Live.com, and now their newest name, Outlook.com all on the exact same infrastructure.
They aren’t necessarily aliases of each other from your POV, so e.g. the mailbox for Joe.Blow@Hotmail.com is utterly separate from Joe.Blow@Live.com and probably represent two different people. But if you’re Joe Blow and the same name is not taken at one of the other services, you’re welcome to assign it as an alias to your existing name, whichever domain it comes from.
Now from MSFT’s POV all the mail for both of them are being processed on effectively the same set of servers and software.
I have my name as my email on outlook, live, and hotmail. As they were introducing them, I rushed in and got my first and last name as the address.
Hotmail is an old email domain, but it’s run just like the rest.
I just checked my activity and it shows all of my successful signins from two and three days ago (that didn’t work, but at least I know I used the right password), and all of my password resets. I don’t see any unsuccessful attempts, but maybe it doesn’t show those.
Maybe someone else can try that experiment. I’m still feeling the relief of getting back in.
Anyone with an outlook/live account – definitely check out the Microsoft authenticator – has been quick and easy to get in as I log in various devices.