Lost and revived

Few days back I suddenly realized that my hotmail account is not accessible. When I tried to access it, the system told me that the account is blocked or is being used by someone else.

The sheer thought of someone else using my account was scary. Not that I was using hotmail very frequently, but few people still have my hotmail id and the same id is registered with some entities. Not to mention, it is my first ever email account, I didn't want to loose it just like that.

I tried all the options mentioned on the help page displayed by the Windows Live ID service, like resetting the password. However, initially it didn't even allow me to reset the password. The link kept on suggesting that should try sending mail to my "alternate" email address registered with hotmail, but couldn't figure out a way to do that. Not that I remembered if I ever took effort to register "alternate" mail ID with hotmail. Later, I tried their last option - to report it to service agents and they would look into the matter i.e. human intervention. I thought this would be faster than the claimed 48-72 hours, but I didn't get a response even after a week. Moreover, the link that Windows Live ID had shared with me for posting follow up on my request didn't work. So I tried all the options again.

This time I could reset my password, but still couldn't login with new password. So again, the only option was to register request with WLI. This time it worked :) I got response in 3 days and now my account is active with all the older messages intact :)

I am kind of surprised to see my own reactions to all this episode. When I realized I can't sign in to the service, my first reaction was how can I forget my password!!! Then it started making me worried. I tried to recall who all have this mail id and if there's someone important enough. When it dawned on me that the account has some sensitive information, I was fiercely looking for ways to unlock the account. I tweeted about it, wrote it on FB in the hope that someone may have faced it in the past and would be able to help me out. No luck!! After certain point, I started preparing myself on giving up the account. But the last attempt worked and now I have all access to my account. Went through many of the old mails, mails when I was in Bangalore, the s-six group we had formed there, then the mail related to my relocation back to Pune and what not..

It was a good journey down the memory lane...

Just wondering, what would happen if my gmail account gets locked/lost/stolen??? !!!!! Scared...

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