Hotmail Password Recovery.

June 20, 2010 5:43 AM

Please help my wife! She is locked out of Hotmail but is mysteriously still able send and receive from the account on her Blackberry.

My wife got her new blackberry about two weeks ago and changer her password on Hotmail on the same day. She in-putted the new password on her blackberry, but in the intervening time she forgot what it was! Yesterday she tried to log into the Hotmail site and obviously could not get in.

She tried the reset password link but has received no email from Microsoft in return. Somewhere along the line Hotmail have changed the way they do this and now only give the option to email a reset link to the account (not arriving) or the alternative email they have on file (her old uni account which has expired).

So we are in a bind. Going through Hotmail's official channels doesn't work. We did find this password recovery page. But it has been well over 24hours since we posted and there has been no response from them.

So my question is this. Is there any way to recover the password from the Blackberry? Or Is there any other way of contacting hotmail?

posted by gergtreble to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Any way to remind herself what she was thinking when she changed the password? Putting myself in that mindset helps me remember what I chose.

Or change the expired school address to yours?
posted by GaelFC at 7:58 AM on June 20, 2010

well we cant get into the account to make the changes so that's out. As for remembering it? She has tried every single combination she can think of and none have worked.

I just find it strange that they don't allow you to just answer your secret question any more. I cant even find that option.
posted by gergtreble at 10:12 AM on June 20, 2010

Although I have never used a Blackberry, I have seen blackberry backup software mentioned here before. I think if you could somehow backup her phone to a computer, then there is the possibility that you could find it in a settings file.
posted by special-k at 10:55 AM on June 20, 2010

If she uses the hotmail POP service and not some proprietary program (sorry, don't know much about blackberries) she could try this tool.
It basically simulates a mail server and will echo all passwords sent to it in cleartext. You just have to run it on any computer, change the mailserver data on the blackberry from pop3.live.com to whatever address you are running the recovery tool on, and you have to turn off the option to encrypt passwords; this way the blackberry will send the unencrypted password to the fake server which will echo it for you to see.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 10:56 AM on June 20, 2010

the reason why her blackberry can access this information is because that information is probably stored in her service books and the Blackberry Internet Service servers.

its very unlikely that the password could be easily extracted from anything on the phone.
posted by in.betweener at 1:09 PM on June 20, 2010

This is now resolved. Microsoft eventually got back to us via the password recovery forum. Word to the wise you ain't gonna get support over the weekend. Come Monday it got sorted.

Thanks for the help everyone.
posted by gergtreble at 3:00 PM on June 22, 2010