What to do if you think your account has been stolen.

If you suspect that an unauthorized person has used your Windows Live ID to sign into your Windows Live Hotmail acccount, or any other Windows Live service, please read this article for further help.

Many times, an account is compromised because of a malicious website that was provided in an e-mail, Instant Message, or other website that asked you to provide your username and password. If you remember the site or link where this had occurred, please let us know so that we can work to have the site removed as soon as possible.

The important thing to note here is that if you still have access to your account, then you should change your password and other information right away by accessing the following links:
   > Change Your Password
   > Update/Change your Secret Answer
   > Update/Change your alternate e-mail

If you no longer have access to your account, you may want to try the suggestions found on our Password Reset Basics page. This will walk you through some basic password reset items that may assist you in getting access back to your account.

There is also a Windows Live Validation Page that we have set up to attempt to validate ownership of an account in cases where the Password Reset Basic steps do not work.  The Windows Live ID Validation Page was created to ask key questions about your account (only you would be able to provide to us) when you created or updated your account. The more information you provide to us, the better for our Support Agents to validate your identity. We will not provide you an verification to what answers you have gotten correct or what answers you provided that were incorrect. This is for everyone's security and privacy. We appreciate your understanding in this very sensitive matter. The direct link to the Validation Page is: https://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlidvalidation 

Here are some key items that will prevent us from assisting in resetting a password would be:
       1. You did not provide accurate information upon creation. 
       2. You did not provide any information upon creation. 
       3. You are unable to remember any detail on your account. 
       4. The information on the account does not match what you have provided. 
       5. You did not provide enough information to validate ownership. 
              a. Before completing the validation page, you should try to provide as much information before submitting. 
              b. Name and email address is never enough for validation purposes.

Please allow up to 24 hours for a response from our support team. We hope that this information is helpful, and please be sure to let us know of any malicious sites or links you encounter.

We appreciate any feedback on the content of the solution, but we advise you to post feedback only. Do not provide account information in the feedback as this section is only designed for feedback and no interaction options for us. Use the support options above to resolve issues related to a compromised account. If this Solution did not answer your question, you can ask other users your question in the Accounts and Passwords Community.

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