HELP! Hotmail blocked!

[Kurt Veltman]

I have a new phone, and should be able to get my emails to my phone. It has been working for the past few weeks, but today I realized I hadn't gotten an email in awhile. I tried logging in from my computer, and I was told that my hotmail account was blocked. Apparently something was fishy, so Hotmail blocked it and "cleaned" it. Now I can't get in. They give a way to supposedly reset everything, but the only way they have to get ahold of me is through an email I haven't used in 5-10 years. When I try to reset the password, I run into deadends. At one point, the most promising option I had was a page where they (presumably MSN) wanted me to enter my name, birthdate, former passwords, recent "Subject line" entries, among other things. I am hoping there is another way to deal with this, rather than giving out so much info. Any one have any ideas?

[Kurt Veltman]

Ha! I was going to subscribe to this so I could see when someone responded, but I CAN'T GET TO MY EMAIL! Aaaaaarrrrggghhh!

[Chuck Tweedy]

gmail

[Kurt Veltman]

So how is gmail going to help me get access to my locked out hotmail account? Am I missing something here?

[Greg Robinson]

Sorry Kurt, no advice here, but I gave up on hotmail years ago after a similar experience with a couple of accounts I had with their service. On both occasions, I was not able to retrieve the accounts. If I remember correctly, they were closed because I had not accessed them in 30 days or something like that.
Since switching to gmail, I have not had any problems, and the spam filter is much better.

Good luck recovering your accounts!

[Kurt Veltman]

Got it back! I don't know how exactly, but I was able to redo an account I haven't used in years, which they had as my backup email. A code was sent to this old email, and when I entered the code in the correct place with the recovery tool, I was granted access again. Very glad to have it open again.

[Mario Proulx]

Gmail is the way to go.

Hotmail was obsolete 12 years ago.... No, wait... 14 years ago....

[Kurt Veltman]

So how do I get all the emails I haven't read or want to keep transferred over? And what is the difference anyways?

[Charlie Schultz]

Here's some help on transferring to gmail: http://www.wikihow.com/Switch-from-Hotmail-to-Gmail

I can't help you with the differences though- I've never used hotmail.

[Peter Wilcox]

Before you sign up for gmail or other google services, you may want to read something like this:

http://blog.eset.com/2012/03/14/google- ... nfographic

They have a huge amount of data on a huge amount of people worldwide - hopefully it will never come back to bite. Of course, our personal privacy these days is pretty much non-existent, even without google. At the least they have a record of google searches from my IP address, though I've never signed up for any services.

[Mario Proulx]

And the black helicopters begin to circle.....

[Peter Wilcox]

No conspiracy theories here. I just think people should be aware of what they're signing up for.

There is no free lunch.

[Simon Magennis]

And the black helicopters begin to circle.....

No conspiracy theories here. I just think people should be aware of what they're signing up for.

There is no free lunch.

Never has been. Just remember who "invented" the internet. DARPA in the 1960's. Since then the whole world has been graciously allowed to piggyback. Hmm ... they are so generous.