Helping people protect their Hotmail accounts

Posted by Walter Harp
Director of Product Management, Windows Live

Over the past few months, Windows Live has announced several new security features that will provide additional account protection for people on Hotmail, including Single Use Codes, Full Session SSL, SMS-based account recovery, and Trusted Senders – this all in addition to our SmartScreen safety filter, which helps protect people against phishing and malware.  You’ll see even more from us in the weeks ahead.

In the last two years, consumer webmail and social networking services across the web have experienced an increase in the incidence of hijacking, which occurs when someone illegally gains access to another person’s account – email, social profile - and then uses that account for malicious activity. In a typical scenario, hackers will hijack large numbers of accounts and then use those accounts to send spam or social invites to the victims’ friends or others on the victims’ contact lists. 

As two security experts from Google and Microsoft discussed yesterday on the video embedded in this blog, no consumer email or social networking service is immune to this challenge.

This week, Hotmail began a new effort to proactively restore control of hijacked accounts to their legitimate owners, enabling people to kick the spammers out using simple, self-enabled methods. 

For anyone who requires additional assistance, we have set up a dedicated support path at https://windowslivehelp.com/accountrecovery

Hotmail is committed to safeguarding our customers’ accounts, fighting spam, and preventing malicious activity on the service. We are constantly monitoring the service for unusual activity and routinely take steps to secure our customers’ accounts.

Please visit this page to learn more about how you can protect your Hotmail credentials.