I received an alarming email notifying me of a successful sign-in to my Microsoft account from China. The intruder was logged in for about nine minutes before I changed my password. What steps can I take right now to secure my account and ensure they didn't access any of my private information?
4 Answers
Don’t forget to check for any active logins or sessions across your accounts and log out all of them. This will help terminate any potential access the intruder might still have after your password change.
I recommend downloading the Microsoft verification app. It sends a numeric code to your phone every time someone tries to sign in. You just need to enter that code to access your account, which makes it a lot harder for anyone else to get in.
Oh, and if you’ve reused that password elsewhere, it's crucial to change those as well to keep everything safe.
First off, definitely enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on your account. It's one of the best ways to secure your access. As for what they could have accessed in those nine minutes, it’s tough to say for sure, especially if you have saved passwords in your Microsoft account. You should consider changing those passwords immediately if that’s the case.
Yeah, and make sure to use different passwords for your other accounts too to prevent a similar issue.
I use that app myself! It's really effective. I often get alerts for login attempts from random locations, and since they can't match the code, they can't get in.