Looks like my hotmail has been hijacked- what can I do?

[pootleflump]

Tried to sign in to my account tonight and it will not accept my password . I haven't changed my password in 10 years so I know I'm entering it correctly.

I can only think that someone has gotten into my account and changed my password . It's so frustrating thinking that someone may be going through all my emails- I'm not very good at deleting stuff so have hundreds.

I can't reset my password as whatever I've no idea what email address I supplied as an alternative and I've had 8 addresses in the past 10 years so don't know which postcode I have registered (don't remember ever updating my details).

I've emailed hotmail from dh's account so hopefully won't take too long to hear from them.

Does anyone have any experience of this? Do you think I'll ever get all my stuff back?

Did you give it an hour and then try again? I had a bit of a panic on Tuesday when I tried to sign in but it didn't recognise my password, however 30 mins later it did.

Sounds like an authentication error as Bran says - clear your cookies and try again.

Don't panic yet in other words!

I have had this happen.... as bran says leave it a little while and try again. Sometimes hotmail has problems with their servers and it won't be you.

Thanks, have tried those things . Will try again in the morning.

Is your paypal connected to your hotmail address?

Still not working. QS, my paypal is connected to my hotmail but I've checked that and there doesn't seem to be anything untoward there.

If I were you I would check both paypal and ebay and change passwords there.

Have done as you said QS- thanks.

Received an email from their help centre requesting loads of details so hopefully hear something back tomorrow.

I hope you get it all sorted soon.

That's quite worrying, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

Would it have been easy for someone to guess your password or the security question (if there is a security question on Hotmail)? I accidently logged into someones gmail and changed the password without realising what I was doing and it was scarily easy to do. It was one that I only use occasionally when signing up for websites that I think wil generate lots of junkmail. The email name is my two childhood dogs names, but I reversed them by mistake and, of course, the password didn't work. So I answered the security question, which was stupidly easy, and changed the password and only realised it wasn't my email account when I got to the inbox.

Got it sorted . They didn't say whether it had actually been compromised or not so I think it may just have been an authentication error.

I've changed my password to a high strength one as well as security questions.

bran - that is scary!