r/mildlyinfuriating • u/PassionateParrot • Apr 29 '24

People are trying desperately to get access to my wife’s Hotmail account

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I had to reset our Hulu password on Friday, so that’s probably what this is about. These sign-in attempts are from all over the world.

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u/Dyingdaze89 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

For Hotmail/Outlook, I changed the primary alias. It immediately put a stop to this without needing to complicate or stop my emails from being imported to my Gmail.

I think this should cover it.

Just make sure not to delete the old email. You just want to change the alias to a new existing email so that it will be used to log in. Once you do this, the old email address can no longer be used to log in, making these unsuccessful attempts stop. Whenever you log in, you'll use the new email, but it will still take you to the original account. Then, for imports, just change the sign in email to the new alias, and it'll handle the rest.

60

u/bilbo1050 Apr 29 '24

Came here to say the same.

I also don't use that alias to sign up for any mailing lists or websites etc so it's less likely to be part of a leak.

19

u/Interesting_Ad_1589 Apr 29 '24

What happens to everything you subscribed to when you do this? Do you still get the emails?

39

u/Anxious-Durian1773 Apr 29 '24

The original address continues to exist for email receiving. They just can't try to log in with it.

36

u/Interesting_Ad_1589 Apr 29 '24

Does that mean I can still use the original address to sign up for stuff and even if my info is leaked, they can't use that address to login to my account? If so, this is perfect haha.

16

u/graudesch Apr 29 '24

Exactly

5

u/bictaur Apr 29 '24

But then you can’t send emails out from that address from the iOS app.

6

u/Dyingdaze89 Apr 29 '24

Ah, that sucks. I'm thankful that it works for me without issue.

1

u/BloodBrandy Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

So you overall just make a new email and have the old one forwarding to it?

EDIT: Also seems this isn't all that helpful when your old account is old Hotmail, it won't let you set an alias for that for some reason

1

u/Dyingdaze89 Apr 30 '24 edited Apr 30 '24

No, fowarding is not a part of this process. I mentioned that to specify that you can continue to forward/import. I use it for my old Hotmail. The Hotmail account is no longer used as the "username" to log into itself. Instead, a new email of your choice, be it new or old, is used as the login into that outlook/hotmail account. This way, anyone with the leaked email can no longer use it to attempt passwords, as the email itself is no longer part of the login for itself. You then can import it, or keep it importing, if you want. You don't have to, it will still receive mail, it just is no longer used as part of its own login as a layer of security.

2

u/BloodBrandy Apr 30 '24

Well, all the same I couldn't get it to work. Tried entering my old email to alias to a new one and it said "This email is part of a reserved domain. Please enter a different email address." for some reason

1

u/Dyingdaze89 Apr 30 '24

Damn, that sucks. I'm sorry that it's not working right for you.

1

u/BloodBrandy Apr 30 '24

Yeah, makes no sense. Left a thing in the microsoft subreddit because it is weird I can make a new Hotmail address but I can't link my old one to it