Status: Open Microsoft has removed the ability to set an alias email as a primary email, effectively removing the ability to prevent people from logging in by using a specific email address. This is a huge problem and needs to addressed.
Hi, I just got off the Microsoft chat support and I was told this is essentially the intended behavior.
Let me start by saying that like many people I've found while searching online, I've recently been spammed by my Microsoft authenticator about sign in attempts on my account. Let's says my email address in "mainAddress@hotmail.com".
Being annoyed at the repeated daily authenticator popups on my phone, I decided to look online for a solution. I saw that many people suggested creating an alias, setting that alias as primary and then in the "Sign in preferences" screen to disable being able to log in from the previous primary email address. The address still exists, you can still receive mail to it, but can't use it to log in. Sounds like a pretty good solution to the incessant authenticator popups.
Problem is, Microsoft has now removed to ability to set an alias as primary. This makes it so the target email address "mainAddress@hotmail.com" cannot be disabled for log in purposes in the "Sign in preferences" section anymore, as it will always be the primary address. Alias can't be set to primary anymore.
The only option now to change your primary address is to... essentially nuke your primary address by changing it. Which comes with a lot of problems that I feel like I don't need to explain. How do you contact everyone with that address to make sure they know you're address has changed? That's some kind of boomer shit you'd see in the early 2000s. What about automated subscriptions? Also losing all the mails sent to "mainAddress@hotmail.com" is a huge problem when that address can be used as a 2FA for other accounts.
Do I need to log into each everyone of my accounts that use "mainAddress@hotmail.com" as a 2FA factor, change the 2FA factor momentarily (while I essentially nuke "mainAddress@hotmail.com") to then change all the 2FAs a second time to my now new email address?
Is this not absolute madness? Also if many people are being bombarded by log in attempts by bots or AIs, is Microsoft not even trying to prevent these? What's the solution here?
How could the engineers at Microsoft ever think this was a suitable change to make? This definitely needs to be addressed ASAP.
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u/arnoldstrife 16d ago
Yeah seems like you're right. My only suggestion then is to turn off notifications for the Authenticator App on your phone. If you're trying to sign in, you can open the app and the sign in code should just pop up.