My MSN email account has been blocked....?????????
By mehale
@mehale (2200)
United States
September 28, 2011 1:43pm CST
I don't log into my email but once or twice a week and today when I tried to it had been blocked. Now I am wondering if I might have a virus on my computer. I have not sent anything to violate the terms of use, but still....the damage has been done. Does anyone know of any new viruses going around that would affect a MAC computer? I have scanned and am re-scanning and so far mine comes up clean. I don't get it.
1 person likes this
2 responses
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
28 Sep 11
Macs are much less prone to viruses than PCs and being unable to log on to a website is something which I have never heard of any virus affecting.
The first thing to check is that you are typing the username and password correctly. The single most common fault, believe it or not, is failing to notice that Caps Lock is on!
If that checks out OK (as I'm sure it does), then it sounds as though your MSN account has been hacked and the password changed.
MSN should have a link somewhere on the sign on page to recover a 'forgotten' password (I don't use MSN/Hotmail a great deal, so I'm not familiar with the page or the procedure). There should, anyway, be a procedure for recovering/changing the password. It may involve answering a 'secret question'. Let us hope that the hacker (assuming there is one) has not thought to change that and also that you remember the answer you typed in, possibly a long time ago!
If all of the above fails, you will have to contact MSN support saying that you believe that your account has been hacked and your details changed. They will be able to recover it for you but it may take a day or so.
1 person likes this
@mehale (2200)
• United States
28 Sep 11
I have tried the things you suggested and suspect that it has been hacked. I am unable to log in on my phone either. It does not give the option for forgotten password, instead comes up with a secure page from MSN saying that my account has been blocked and I need to reset the password, but now I am down to waiting on them to send the recovery info in an email to another account, which could take up to 24 hours per MSN. Go figure. I have virus protection on my MAC and have actually had the laptop for almost 3 years now with no trouble. Not sure HOW this happened, but it sure is a pain! LOL
By the way thanks for the good suggestions and response.
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
29 Sep 11
When any online account has been hacked, it is usually nothing to do with security on your computer, so you need not be concerned about that. There are, it is true, some malwares which will read your password as you type it and send it to the hacker but there are MANY other ways which a hacker uses, including just blind guesswork. Sometimes, however, a hacker will use software which automatically tries out a large number of common passwords until it finds one that works.
A very common way that accounts can be easily hacked is when the user logs on to a public computer, perhaps when they are on holiday or away from home. Some public computers may have keylogging software on them but more often it is simply that the person closed the browser without logging off properly. When the browser is opened again, the user may still be logged in (though I think that MSN and other companies have mechanisms which try to prevent this).
I am not sure of MSN's policy but there are some online accounts which will now warn you if the account is accessed from another computer and many will automatically block the account after three unsuccessful attempts to log in. This may, in fact, be what has happened to you: your account was not SUCCESSFULLY hacked but was automatically blocked by MSN because of three unsuccessful attempts. Let us hope so, in any case!
It can take up to 24 hours (or longer) for several reasons. The first is that it requires human intervention to unblock the account. The second is that a time delay is a protection against a real hacker getting access to the account. While it seems like a nuisance to you, you should understand that MSN have your best interests at heart by making a delay!
I hope that you are back to normal very soon!
1 person likes this
@moneywinner (1864)
• Brazil
29 Sep 11
I don't know about the virus, but the same thing happened to me. First, I could not login to my MSN account, because it says that was blocked. And, when I tried to login to my hotmail email, it says that the password was wrong. I try everything, but I lost this account.
1 person likes this
