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Writer's pictureSimon Salvin

Recovery Details

An issue that crops up every now and again reared it’s ugly head once more this week!

A client was struggling to set up her new laptop with Microsoft account verification issues and the loss of email.

She had inadvertently created a new Microsoft account using her mobile number, it proceeded to ask for an email address which wouldn’t accept as it already belonged to a Microsoft account. Coupled with not knowing her password we enrolled on a whirlwind ride of password guess work, resetting and confirmation codes.

it was easy enough to close one Microsoft account, but the real trouble started with her email. None of her passwords worked, the email was working on her iPad, and we decided a reset was in order. The only recovery option available was an email address no longer in service. Searching the Google help pages yielded no help whatsoever in finding a last ditch recovery, hoping to find a form much like the Microsoft recovery process which asks a great deal of questions in great detail, but no nothing?

so it was left to create a new email address which we did with outlook.com and ensured 2FA was enabled and we saved a copy of the recovery code for any future disasters.

The moral of this story is recovery information, the phone number and/or email address to send a code or link to enable the resetting of passwords. It’s the one piece of information always forgotten to update should you change phone number or email address, yet it’s the lifeline to recovering passwords. If you have a Microsoft or Google account, please check your security information now, yes I mean NOW, go, do it. And while you are there turn on 2FA. You may just thank me one day.

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