How to recover an Outlook.com account without
the recovery phone or email. Hi, everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com. I get a series of questions that basically
all boil down to something like this. I've forgotten my hotmail password and I
no longer have access to the phone number I set up on the account when
I created it years ago. What do I do? What I want to be explicit about
is that without proper preparation, it is possible that you may not get
your account back at all, ever. I'm going to walk through the steps that I believe you should take that will improve
the odds of you getting your account back. But there is no guarantee. It is quite possible. And unfortunately,
it happens all too often, where folks in this situation
lose their account forever. If there's one thing to take
away from this video. It's this. It is critical, absolutely critical that you keep your
account recovery information up to date. Be it a phone number that changes,
change the phone number in your recovery information,
or an email address that you no longer use,
find an email address that you do use and set that up as your
recovery information and more. The bottom line here, though, is that ultimately it is your
responsibility to keep this information up to date so that you can continue
to access your account. Here's what we'll do if we can't. So here we are.
I went to Outlook. Com, and it redirected me here
to the sales page at microsoft. Com for Microsoft Outlook. That's fine. We'll click on Sign In. This gets you to the familiar
Microsoft sign-in page. I'm going to use my Ask Leo
example at hotmail. Com account, and I'm going to assume
that I have forgotten my password. I do not know my password. I do. But let's assume I forgot it. So step one is, of course,
to click on forgot password. Since I have two-factor authentication
turned on to this account, they could use that second factor
to verify who I am. However,
let's say either I never set up two-factor authentication or I've lost the second
factor as well as my password. So use a different verification option. Now, this is where it will give you an option to send an email message to one
or more of your recovery accounts. So in this case, I have a couple of email addresses associated with this
account as recovery addresses. In my case, yeah, they're all valid. I've got the Authenticator app, I've got the first email address,
I've got the second email address. But let's assume that you don't. Let's assume that either you never set up recovery addresses or
you no longer have access to the account to which those recovery
addresses are sent. I don't have any of these. Did you set up a recovery code? Well, in my case, yes, I did. It's part of my article setting up
a Microsoft account recovery code. I strongly suggest you do this in addition to setting up your recovery email
address and recovery phone numbers. However, let's assume we don't have this. We either never set it up or we can't find
the recovery code that we did set up. Nope. Okay, recover your account. This then is the process, the beginning of what I believe to be
a manual account recovery process. I'm going to type in a
contact email address. And of course, yes, there's a CAPTCHA. Boy, let's see if I'm correct here. We'll see if that does the right thing. So they sent a code to
the email address I specified. This was an email address
I specified just now. This is not one of the original
Recover email addresses. It's one that I'm using today. So by definition, then it should be me. That recovery address, this address that I'm using right now,
is by definition, me. But they do need to make sure
that I have access to that address. So they have sent me a recovery code
to that address. All that does is verify that I am
the person at that email address. Now, in this case, my security code is 317308, and we'll say, Verify. Poof. Now, account recovery. Tips to get back into your account. Now, you'll notice that they're asking
for a lot of different information. I'm going to go ahead and…
I don't remember exactly what I used. I probably used. Actually, I'm going to say I used the. I'm going to use the birthdate of Ask Leo
as the birthdate for this account. I'm in Washington. That hasn't changed. My zip code, Woodenville. Answer your security question,
mother's birthplace. Again, did you set this up? And did you set this up? With an answer you now remember? Every little bit
of information is important. Every little bit of information you can get correct increases the likelihood of
your being able to recover your account. I'm going to leave it blank since
perhaps I forgot where my mom was born. Enter a valid first name. Well, obviously, that's
not my first name then. We will go for… Let's see if this works. Ask Leo, last name of example. Hopefully, the person reviewing this will
realize that regardless of how it's structured or whether or not it has
the exclamation point, that matches. We'll hit Next. Okay, other passwords you've
used for this account. In other words, if you have changed your
password at any time during your ownership of this account,
provide those old passwords. Presumably, only you could
have known those passwords. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you changed it
because there was a breach. I don't know.
But again, your ability to provide this level of information
as part of the recovery information increases the chances of being
able to recover your account. Have you ever used any of these
other products with this account? I certainly have used Outlook. Com or Hotmail. Have you ever purchased
something from Microsoft? I have not. In this case, I believe that if you say yes, they might very well ask you
for things like the credit card that you used in order to continue
to verify your identity. Email addresses of contacts
you've recently sent email to. Again, this is all additional information that stacks the deck in favor
of your getting your account back. Remember who it was you sent email
messages to recently, and especially also exact subject
lines of your recently sent emails. I, gladly, I don't remember
those, but maybe you do. Maybe you have some options to do that. I'll hit Next. You didn't provide us with enough
information to confirm your identity. I'm going to stop at this point
in the process because honestly, I don't need to recover this account,
but it gives you an idea of the hoops you're going to have to jump through
if you want to recover your account. If this form accepts your entry, you wait. I don't know how long you wait. The issue is that there's some other process that happens
that takes all of the information you've provided and matches it to the
characteristics of your account. If they can confirm with enough certainty
that you are the rightful account holder, you'll get a message from them
with the next steps. Usually, I would assume it's
a link to set a new password. On the other hand, again, it is not uncommon to get a message
back that says, Nope, we weren't able to verify that you
are the legitimate account holder. You can certainly try this
process again if you want to. Provide more information,
provide better information, provide the information that you believe
to be as accurate as humanly possible, because that is the only way that you're
going to get your account back. So why all this hassle? This certainly seems like we're having
to jump through a lot of hoops. Well, I want to be clear. Notice, as we worked through this process,
we were given several opportunities to provide information that we
had set up ahead of time. Recovery emails, recovery phone numbers were not included,
since I don't have that on this account, but had you had recovery phone numbers,
those would have been part of it. The two-factor authentication code, the Microsoft recovery code that you would
have set up earlier, all of those things,
any of those things would have gotten you potentially back into your account,
but without anything. Well, it becomes a much,
much harder problem to solve. And here's the issue. You want to do this because you
legitimately own the account. Hackers are doing this all the time. They are using these recovery
mechanisms to break into accounts. That means that Microsoft must, and I
say must, err on the side of caution. If they can't prove that the account belongs to you,
they shouldn't give it to you, because if their standards are low enough,
they could give it to a hacker. And trust me, what we've just gone through
has probably already saved your account from being hacked
without you ever knowing a thing. So what should you do? Well, hopefully it's obvious by now. Before your account gets hacked, make sure you've got a recovery email
address and that it's current, that it's an email address
at which you can get a message. Set up a recovery phone number. A phone number at which you can get
a text message if at all possible. I don't recall if Microsoft
does landlines or not. If they do, great,
you could do a landline. Otherwise, you'll need to do
an SMS-capable lumber. Set up a Microsoft account recovery code. Again, this is one of those things where you set it up before you need it,
you squirl it away somewhere, and no matter where you are,
whether or not you have email or phone, the account recovery code, in theory,
would get you back into your account. Make absolutely certain that all
of this information is kept up to date. This is how people lose accounts. Absolutely, this is how
they lose accounts. Like I said at the beginning, the phone number changed and they
didn't update it in their account. Keep it all up to date. Consider adding two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication will certainly
help prevent your account from being hacked from somebody else getting
into it when they shouldn't. But as we've seen, having that second factor
in the process of account recovery can help you get your account back
if you've lost everything else. And if you're in a situation right now
where you've not been able to get back into your account and everything we've
discussed can't be made to work for you, then A, you've lost your account,
and I'm very, very sorry. But I know of no other way to get it back. And B, please, please learn from this experience
and set up your next account or your other accounts with all of the appropriate
recovery and security information you can so that you never,
ever have to be in this position again. For updates, for comments, for links related to this
topic and more, visit Askleo.com/16095. I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is Askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.
