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Hotmail account hac...
 

[Closed] Hotmail account hacked - what's the procedure for recovery?

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[#2718109]

Got an email from my Dad today telling me he was in Spain and had misplaced his wallet. 2000 Euros would see him alright, blah, blah, blah...

So his account has been hacked and the password changed. Sneaky ****ers have also changed the security questions so there is no easy way to recover it. What is the procedure in this scenario? Is there any chance of it being fully reinstated?

Cheers,

SC


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 9:21 pm
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https://security.live.com/acsr.aspx

Also, do a malware scan on his PC or it'll just get compromised again.


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 9:24 pm
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Cheers Cougar.

Gone through the process which gives me a PIN to access a private forum discussion. currently only shows the info I submitted about my Dad's account and tells me the process of verification may take 24 hours. Has anyone else been through this and how successful was it?


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:02 pm
 WTF
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This happened to father in law who replied to phishing email.
All his contacts were emailed the same email and retrieval was a case of answering Hotmail various questions about the account ie.last emails ,names etc.
Hacker could have deleted all the info but didn`t and everything was retrieved.


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:06 pm
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Thanks WTF.

He managed to login after he'd been alerted to the bogus emails sent to all his contacts but it froze him out when he tried to change the password. I assume that the freeze would also keep any account squatters at bay also.

I've answered the questions on the account recovery form such as contact names, recent email subjects etc. - will this be sufficient or are there further verification stages to go through?


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:14 pm
 WTF
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Nope that was all.
Quite straight forward.


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:15 pm
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it froze him out when he tried to change the password

See my first post.

[url= http://www.malwarebytes.org/ ]Get thee MBAM.[/url]


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:20 pm
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Not sure I understand your last reply Cougar... (am I being thick?)

I'm well aware of Malwarebytes and such like, but the point I was making was that the Hotmail account seemed to function normally after the bogus emails had been sent, until he tried to change the password whereupon it gave him a message saying that the account had been accessed by someone else. My question is: was this standard procedure upon spotting irregular activity and does it mean the account is frozen to all?

Is that clearer?


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:35 pm
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Your reply was clear, but my reply perhaps wasn't in so far as, I don't know. (-:

Where I'm going is, it's highly likely that the account was compromised either directly or indirectly via malware. The fact that something is blocking you from changing the credentials would also point towards an infection.

Whether or not this is normal behaviour I don't know, it's a very long time since I last had to recover a Hotmail account (last one I did was via a brute force attack, which should give an indication of just how long ago it was - things have changed somewhat since then).


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:39 pm
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OK. Cheers.

He didn't have any anti-malware in place so that is possibly the reason for the account being compromised in the first place. I'll be sure he locks the stable door from now on.

🙂


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:43 pm
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We-ell, not really. But therein lies a longer conversation.


 
Posted : 04/05/2011 10:45 pm