computer hackers

[chappell]

when I log into my microsoft hotmail a/c, I see a message at the top of the page saying "The message you are looking for has been moved or deleted". there is a close button to the right of it and when I close it my messages are all there o'k. Its very annoying so I contacted microsoft and asked them to remove it. they said they did not put it there and it was a hacker trying to get into my a/c and steal my sensitive information. They spent nearly 2 hours and wanted to charge me over £100.I rejected that as I am an 80 year old pensioner and cannot afford that sort of help. is there anyone here can sort this out for me please?

[Plastic Nev]

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

The first thing to do is to change the password for that account, and to change it to a strong or difficult to guess one. The ideal is random letters mixed with three or four numbers and at least eight letters and numbers.

If hackers are involved, the quicker you change your password the better it will be for you, as once done, the hacker is locked out.

 

This type of hacking is common on Hotmail, Google Mail, Yahoo Mail and a few others The hackers use a very fast working password guessing computer program, the first thing it does is run through all the more obvious and well known passwords, then goes to more complex ones. If it hasn't cracked a way in to an account after several minutes, they know they have a difficult one and move on to someone else's account, the stronger and better the password, the less chance they can hack into your account.

As an example, I always make my passwords at least ten characters long and with random numbers mixed in. Where capital letters can be used in a password, those should also be included.

An Example could be, (don't use this one though) :- hL3neWcr1X7.

Yes that is impossible to easily remember, which also helps make it such a good one.

 

Nev.

[Ray1000]

... so I contacted microsoft and asked them to remove it.

... They spent nearly 2 hours and wanted to charge me over £100.

 

Presumably you got the Microsoft telephone number from elsewhere ... it wasn't a number associated with the pop up message?

 

When you say they spent nearly two hours on it ... were you on the phone to Microsoft for two hours?

 

I wouldn't have thought Microsoft would be offering to rectify the problem or to be charging £100 for it.

 

Ray

[chappell]

Thank you so much plastic nev. i have taken your advice, changed p/w using mixture and numbers caps and l/c. so hopefully wont have any more problems.

come to think of it microsoft is almost as bad as the hackers.

thanks again

chappell

[chappell]

Hi Ray

well i bet , that it was not far short of 2 hours. my wife was getting annoyed because she cooked lunch and we had visitors, but this was so important to me i did not want to leave it. fortunately the network i am with allows me 6 hours of talk time and i dont normally use my mobile a lot. I got the number from the google search website so thought it was safe but plastic nev tells me they get in everywhere so who can you trust? she had a strange american accent and i did not like it when she came straight out asking for my credit card details, thats when i hung up and contacted you guys. thanks for your concern.

chappell

[Ray1000]

Thank you Chappell,

 

I've only had one occasion to ring Microsoft (UK) it was a free from a landline 0800 number and they couldn't have been more helpful.

 

At least now, if you have any further problems, you'll be able to come back here.

 

Ray