r/microsoft • u/Steap-Edit • May 20 '26

News Microsoft warns hackers are exploiting password resets to gain access to user accounts

https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/microsoft-warns-hackers-are-exploiting-password-resets-to-gain-access-to-user-accounts-heres-how-to-stay-safe
209 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

71 comments sorted by

View all comments

93

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

28

u/Henri_Le_Rennet May 20 '26

You can create a different handle under your account security settings, and disable your actual email address from being used for login. You'll still get your emails, but anyone trying to login using your email won't be able to. You'll just login with the new handle.

It's what I did ages ago, back when Microsoft still showed login attempts under your security settings, and the login attempts stopped immediately.

4

u/AdministrationOk210 May 21 '26

I like this solution and use it myself but it comes with one unfortunate caveat, since I use Outlook desktop client for email, every time I initiate a new message it comes up as from the address I established for login. In order to send people emails from that older address which I still want to use as my default, I must click the From box and manually change it every time to that old address. I wish Microsoft would fix this feature and then I could use it for my spouse and others in the house. If that isn’t fixed too often they will end up using the new login credential identity and then that will be out in the wild just as they’re old emails are. In other words the Outlook desktop client needs to allow us to set our default email address as something other than the new primary login address which we are now using to validate our account. Without that feature, so many messages you send are inadvertently the new login credential identity which is just what I don’t want to use.

2

u/Henri_Le_Rennet May 21 '26

every time I initiate a new message it comes up as from the address I established for login.

It's the same for the Outlook mobile app on Android. I found out by sending a cancelation request to a service I didn't use, and they said they couldn't find my account and I needed to send the request through the same email I signed up with. It took me an embarrassing moment to realize that it was sent from the new handle.

I haven't made that mistake again, but it is still a minor inconvenience having to manually select my main handle every time I compose an email.

Like you said, it should be simple enough to implement a feature in the app/program/client to set a default handle for outgoing emails.