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Locked out of two Microsoft accounts

9 points by simlevesque ↗ HN
I have two Microsoft accounts that I haven't touched in a decade. Recently I had to access one of them, I still know the password and the recovery question answer. But since it's been so long, they force me to prove my identity by telling them email subjects from ten years ago. I tried three times and failed. The documentation makes it very clear that there are no other official way to authenticate me.

I need to access the email because it is still linked to my twitter account and it was hacked recently. I want to reset the password on twitter but they only allow me to ask them from the initial address linked to that account.

Has anyone been in this situation ? Is there some way to fix this ? I don't have any contact in Microsoft but they have an office in my city. I tried looking on LinkedIn for community managers but a quick search led profile that I can't contact without paying for LinkedIn premium.

Thank you, any help is well appreciated.

6 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 28.2 ms ] thread
malikNF
Something that helped me a while back was, I spoke to some of my friends who I remember interacting with on my email, and had them go through their email to see if there were any emails that I had sent them and they sent me.

So maybe that might be a way in ?

Demonsult
Compared to other providers, it's much easier to call Microsoft and reach a human. I don't know that they can help, but it's worth a shot.
kehrin
Had two mail accounts nuked because of this around half a decade ago. Good luck OP.
ym496
Same thing happened with me as well. When I tried to recover it, they asked me to write exact email subjects and email contacts. I provided them with more than 6 email subjects and emails contacts name to whom I had mailed in the past. It still kept saying that the data you provided is insufficient to prove that it's you. At the end I had to create a new account.
coffeeling
This is a reason I keep some of my random, less used email accounts in Outlook. They get some activity logged when I check my actual emails.
thesilence
That's the corporations services flaws. Next time use different mails and accounts.