Hotmail Tech Support

Full disclosure...today's post is, GASP, practical!  Last week, someone hacked into my Hotmail account.  Years ago I was told to pay to the $19.99 for Hotmail instead of the free account because it got you more storage and tech support.  WRONG.

There is no tech support for any type of hotmail account.  I am truly blessed to have a friend who works for Microsoft that helped me out with number to tech support and I was able to actually speak to a live person.

The email address that hotmail had saved as my back-up email address I no longer have access to, so I couldn't just have a new password emailed to me.

Fortunately, I have learned a couple of tricks in the past few days that I thought I would share with you in case you ever need them.  Obviously, I hope no one has their account hacked but, BEFORE you risk it, let me suggest the following:

1.  Print out HARD copies of any email you would be upset to lose and put them all in page protectors in binders. YES, I have now done this!

2.  Create another email account and list it as your back-up email account.

Now here are the tips from the pros.

1.  ALWAYS use the bing.com search engine if you are looking for answers to Microsoft related problems.

2.  If you ever get locked out of your hotmail account and don't have access to the back-up email address go to bing.com and type this EXACT thing into the search box: secure.live.com/acsr.aspx

The second entry that appears says reset your password.  Click on that.  It will ask you a bunch of questions to verify its your account suchs the email addresses of people in your address book, folder names and recent people you ahve sent emails to.  Once you answer and submit all of these they will reset your account.  This page will also let you enter another back-up email address.  I was back in my account in a matter of minutes.

Now finding out about this reset page took over a day, 4 calls to customer support, some tears and frustration, but I am now back into my hotmail.

I thought I would share it in hopes that if you google Hotmail Tech Support from a search engine other than bing.com, this post would come up and help someone out.