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Forums › Cloud, SaaS › Spurious hotmail password resets


81 posts

Master Geek
Topic # 99767 27-Mar-2012 07:10 Send private message

Bit of a strange one: I have an elderlly relative who uses hotmail and she keeps getting password reset confirmation emails (ie "click on this link to reset your password") for a completely different hotmail account.  It's not a friend's account, no-one we have heard of.
This doesn't seem sinister, and as far as I can tell, the emails are genuinely from MS.  It is annoying though

Anyone seen this before or have any idea on how to stop it?

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258 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user
  Reply # 600536 27-Mar-2012 07:15 Send private message

Interesting I have been getting one of these each month this year.

572 posts

Ultimate Geek
  Reply # 600540 27-Mar-2012 08:12 Send private message

shk292: Bit of a strange one: I have an elderlly relative who uses hotmail and she keeps getting password reset confirmation emails (ie "click on this link to reset your password") for a completely different hotmail account.  It's not a friend's account, no-one we have heard of.
This doesn't seem sinister, and as far as I can tell, the emails are genuinely from MS.  It is annoying though

Anyone seen this before or have any idea on how to stop it?


Someone is trying to hack the account maybe?

My gmail account got hacked the other day.... i wonder how they do this, my password is an uncommon  7 letter word.   You can only check a password every few seconds and gmail puts in captcha phrases if you enter it wrong too many times. 

Must have been a very lucky guess. 

 

3908 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted
  Reply # 600563 27-Mar-2012 09:14 Send private message

Ignore. Do not click.

gzt

3196 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber
  Reply # 600757 27-Mar-2012 15:14 Send private message

might be phishing - trying to get you to enter your current password, then they have control over your account.



81 posts

Master Geek
  Reply # 601627 28-Mar-2012 22:56 Send private message

Thanks for the suggestions

In the end, the curiosity got the better of me, so I opened the link in a sandboxed browser, to find that it was a genuine hotmail password reset.  I reset it to a new password.  On inspecting the hotmail contents, it is apparent that the account has been hacked, and used to send spam emails with malicious links to the owner's contacts.  I was able to find the owner's facebook account, and sent her a message explaining what had happened, and the new password.  No response as yet, hopefully that's the last I'll hear of it.  Still no idea why the password reset was sent to my relative

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