Email problem

[lewishollings]

So recently I've just been on holiday in gran canaria for 1 Week, on the way home I was trying to log in to my email but it kept saying I was typing the wrong password when I'm 100% sure I wasn't, I get home and try to log in figuring it could be some sort of connection problem to find a message saying that someone had been trying to access this account so they need to confirm I am the real user, It asks questions like "What are the last 5 Subjects of your sent emails", I don't send emails enough to actually remember most of these questions and I don't tend to remember my last 5 emails received either.

I also can't remember my security question answer or the email account linked to this one as I made it so long ago, is there any number you can call to talk to someone? This is a hotmail account btw!

Everything I do on the internet is pretty much linked to this account and as I'm in the process of looking for a job it's pretty important, any advice you could give would be really helpful

Thanks.

 

[ubuysa]

Microsoft's customer service details (inc phone numbers) are at http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support&SegNo=2#livehelp_contact. You need to see things from Microsoft's point of view though, they need to be 100% certain that you are the real owner of this email address. Asking you the subject of the last five emails is a reasonable question, and if you're in the process of looking for a job you surely must be able to remember who you have been emailing, what about and whether they have responded to you.

Microsoft will ask a lot of questions and if you can't answer them to their complete satisfaction your email is likely to be toast. Sorry.

 

[lewishollings]

Yeh, just making it clear, I'm not angry at hotmail for any of this, but I was just asking for advice, I can give them more detail over the phone about the emails I have recieved as I can't remember the subject of these emails but I do know the content if that makes sense?

 

[steaky360]

It does make sense, although as ubuysa has said if you can't get through the rigmarole of proving the account is yours they won't give you access.

Bit of a sickener.

 

[lewishollings]

Yeh, it happened to my friend sonny just before uni and as you can imagine he was pretty annoyed, they told him he didn't give enough information to prove the account was his at first but he got it back eventually, no idea how...

 

[ubuysa]

So what you need to do is to write down everything you can remember about your recent emails, both sent and received. Do that before you attempt to contact Microsoft and if they ask for information you just can't remember then tell them that but then offer what you can remember.

The moral of this is to make your security questions things that you'll never forget, like your first pet, the name of your first school, your mother's maiden name, etc.

 

[Androcles]

The moral of this is to make your security questions things that you'll never forget, like your first pet, the name of your first school, your mother's maiden name, etc.

You mean all those things that someone with enough smarts could find out easily?

 

[Yamikotai]

The moral of this is to make your security questions things that you'll never forget, like your first pet, the name of your first school, your mother's maiden name, etc.

My suggestion is to do those, but in reverse. My first pet was Ascii, so I'd have iicsA.

 

[lewishollings]

You mean all those things that someone with enough smarts could find out easily?

The idea of this isn't to mock people, if you have nothing helpful to say then leave, I made the email when I was pretty young so I chose the question "2 Childhood best friends" or something like that, obviously I was still a child when I made it but now I can't for the life of me remember the combination of friends, nowadays I just stick with mothers maiden name and name of first pet because it's something that never changes

 

[lewishollings]

The idea of this isn't to mock people, if you have nothing helpful to say then leave, I made the email when I was pretty young so I chose the question "2 Childhood best friends" or something like that, obviously I was still a child when I made it but now I can't for the life of me remember the combination of friends, nowadays I just stick with mothers maiden name and name of first pet because it's something that never changes

Read what you said wrong ;P but you have a point haha

 

[dogbot]

Don't you have your e-mails stored on the computer, they should be in a folder somewhere.

 

[ubuysa]

You mean all those things that someone with enough smarts could find out easily?

Ok, I challenge you.

What was the name of my first pet?

What was the name of my first school?

What was my mother's maiden name?

Take your time, I'm happy to wait........

 

[steaky360]

Don't you have your e-mails stored on the computer, they should be in a folder somewhere.

No, most people will use hotmails' online client similar to gmail and access it through their website as opposed to downloading the messages.

What was the name of my first pet?

Thursday?

What was the name of my first school?

Thursday?

What was my mother's maiden name?

Thursday?

Perhaps to explain, there have been discussions on board which have led to the discovery that answering Thursday to any question gives you a good chance of it being the correct one. I'm not holding out much hope in this instance though

 

[dogbot]

Ok, I challenge you.

What was the name of my first pet?

What was the name of my first school?

What was my mother's maiden name?

Take your time, I'm happy to wait........

If it wasn't the spider in the matchbox then it would be TBC or 'Rover'

Elementary my dear Watson

The one after the hyphen

 

[Androcles]

The idea of this isn't to mock people, if you have nothing helpful to say then leave, I made the email when I was pretty young so I chose the question "2 Childhood best friends" or something like that, obviously I was still a child when I made it but now I can't for the life of me remember the combination of friends, nowadays I just stick with mothers maiden name and name of first pet because it's something that never changes

I wasn't mocking anyone, i was pointing out that security questions about easy to obtain info is a bit of a silly thing to do.

 

[Androcles]

Ok, I challenge you.

What was the name of my first pet?

What was the name of my first school?

What was my mother's maiden name?

Take your time, I'm happy to wait........

I don't habe the knowledge or inclination to do that, but for someone who does know how to do it and does have the inclination, you know someone who is more likely to want to hack your account, it isn't that hard. just because you or i can't doesn't mean it's safe.

 

[Yamikotai]

With a lot of effort I potentially could - and I'm talking dozens of hours of hard work at minimum. "Ubuysa" evidently isn't very googleable (meaning it's near-impossible to find his real name), and him living on a boat complicates things as there aren't any internet/utility providers I could impersonate on the phone. And even finding his phone number would be hard because of the boat thing. The easiest way to find that would be to get access to PCS' servers which could take anywhere between minutes and never (though probably much closer to the former since they're a small company and probably can't afford professional penetration tests. I also believe they're not very security-conscious since there have been cases on the forum of laptops being delivered with malware on them).

Another avenue would be to trawl through his posts and here and on the boat-owners forum he appears to be on, and see if there's any PID (personally identifying information) with which to find out who is and where he is.

Could also try finding if there is anyone on the boat forum he speaks to regularly, and cross-reference both his and the other person's usernames across other boat forums. If there are any on which the other person is on and ubuysa is not, it would be possible to create an account to impersonate him and see if any info can be extracted via a PM conversation. Much more risk involved there, though.

 

[ubuysa]

I don't habe the knowledge or inclination to do that, but for someone who does know how to do it and does have the inclination, you know someone who is more likely to want to hack your account, it isn't that hard. just because you or i can't doesn't mean it's safe.

You shouldn't believe everything you see in the movies, nor all the sensationalist hype you read in the press.

I spent a large part of my working life in large mainframe system security. Good security is a trade-off between absolute security and usability. For example, my bank could decide to use one-time pads for passwords, extremely secure but not very usable or practical. On the other hand, easily usable security, so that all users of whatever level of competence can use it (your date of birth, for example) is clearly not very secure because too many people could discover that information.

So good security is based on layers with an implied AND relationship between the layers; so it should be difficult (but it's unlikely to be impossible) to discover A and it should be difficult (but again probably not impossible) to discover B, but to discover both A and B and associate them with a specific user is way more difficult. Yet if A and B are very familiar bits of information to the user then it's a very usable and secure system.

The only certain way to remain secure is not to use the Internet (or any other public network) but in this day and age that's not an option. So security is about risk, it's a balance, if you make the security challenges too difficult or too complex then many users will write them down, and that drives a coach-and-horses through your security. That's why almost every bank and financial institution uses a layered approach, using the sorts of personal information mentioned, because it minimises risk whilst maximising usability.

I Google my name fairly often just to check I'm not there (and I'm not). In the UK there are over 50 people with the same name as me, there is one who lives in the same town I was born in and there are two who were born in the same year as me. For people with average British names this pattern is not unusual. So you're going to struggle to find me, never mind my mother's maiden name, I quite agree it's available but there's that AND relationship already, you've got to match the right me with the right mother. My first school will be a real challenge, partly because it doesn't exist any more but also because that information is extremely hard to get access to - it's not online for example. I defy anyone to discover the name of my first pet, because that's not recorded anywhere, you'd have had to know me aged five to know that, but I agree that for some people that information might be obtainable. Your problem then is to match four bits of hard to get information AND get the right match with each one of them AND me. That's incredibly hard for anyone other then me to do.

 

[Androcles]

You shouldn't believe everything you see in the movies, nor all the sensationalist hype you read in the press.

I'm not goiung by movies, i'm going by actual experience of it, i've been on the receiving end multiple times.

All of what you say is true to an extent, but none of that matters jack if you leave the back door open by making your recovery information too simple.

And if you think that they just use google then you are so going to get a shock if it is ever done to you Mr Cross.

 

[ubuysa]

I'm not goiung by movies, i'm going by actual experience of it, i've been on the receiving end multiple times.

All of what you say is true to an extent, but none of that matters jack if you leave the back door open by making your recovery information too simple.

And if you think that they just use google then you are so going to get a shock if it is ever done to you Mr Cross.

That was easy (Skype). I'm still waiting for the others...