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MFA, account security, recovery codes

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Midsmartin
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MFA, account security, recovery codes

#449840

Postby Midsmartin » October 13th, 2021, 2:59 pm

I've just been reading an article about a chap who was locked out of a Microsoft account after tinkering with login settings, apparently due to a bug at the Microsoft end, and found it very hard to regain access:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/12/ ... microsoft/

However in the comments underneath I discovered something new to me.

You can retrieve/save/print a "recovery code" for your Microsoft account to prove ownership of your account should you get locked out through some mishap. We're talking here about the free Microsoft account used these days for Windows logins, not a paid Office365 account

To do so, log in got to 'account settings' ->additional security options, and then "generate a new recovery code" at the bottom.

It's interesting that this functionality is never advertised anywhere. I will guard the code safely, as possession of it presumably might allow almost anyone to take over my account if they also have my username; I don't know what other criteria they use. I don't use the account for much, but I'm sure it would be a right pain to lose it.

Breelander
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Re: MFA, account security, recovery codes

#449981

Postby Breelander » October 13th, 2021, 10:45 pm

Midsmartin wrote:It's interesting that this functionality is never advertised anywhere....

I do not use a Microsoft account to sign in to any of my PCs but I recently found myself in a situation that could only be resolved by creating one, I needed to sign in in order to download a file from a friend's Ondrive.

So I found that It was advertised, but only at the point when you first create the account.

mc2fool
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Re: MFA, account security, recovery codes

#449987

Postby mc2fool » October 13th, 2021, 11:04 pm

Breelander wrote:I do not use a Microsoft account to sign in to any of my PCs...

You don't? Hmmm ... I'd always had the impression you did so you could move licences around ... obviously not. :?

I don't either, but I do have a long standing hotmail account, and logging into that (well, it's Outlook now), that's part of a Microsoft account and I too have found and saved the recovery code....

Breelander
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Re: MFA, account security, recovery codes

#449990

Postby Breelander » October 13th, 2021, 11:41 pm

mc2fool wrote:
Breelander wrote:I do not use a Microsoft account to sign in to any of my PCs...

You don't? Hmmm ... I'd always had the impression you did so you could move licences around ... obviously not. :?

No, never needed to move licences around. All my PCs are used laptops that came with some version of Windows pre-installed by the OEM, either W7 that can (still) be upgraded to W10 and get activated with a digital licence, or they had W8 or W10 pre-installed and a key embedded in their bios firmware by their OEM. An embedded W8/8.1/10 key guarantees that a clean install will activate.

I try to buy machines that already have, or are entitled to upgrade to a Win10 Pro digital licence, but I'm content to work with Home on those that don't.


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