Hotmail/Outlook/MS have yet again completely wiped out my email account...

What is going on with these clowns? For years I used Hotmail because... well it worked. New stuff came along that was probably better but whatever... my trusty old hotmail accounts did the trick and I didn't want to do some massive migration, tell all my contacts, etc...
 
So about a couple years ago they switched to outlook and because I hadn't logged in for a while they wiped out my main account. Over a decade of contacts and communications lost. WTF? So I got over that but just now I had to do something with a more recent account I created just before the change to Outlook (I never would have created it if I knew what they were going to do). I know I've used this account recently but I guess they've done another massive change. Now it's some kind of Microsoft store account. I don't want or need that crap. All my products are licensed and if I needed to buy something from them it's not like it's hard to find them... like EVERYWHERE. It was an email account for chrissake! I ran around chasing down all these ridiculous security codes they were sending to other accounts, it REFUSED to let me go to my inbox until I found some link hidden at the bottom of this new Store Account page and when I finally did all my contacts and emails had yet again been deleted.
 
What the hell are these guys doing?!
 
Anyway... the point is the account in question was the one I used to communicate with some of you guys offsite so if that is the case it's dead and if you sent me anything recently it was never received and completely deleted.
 
Loving all the messages from MS as I screwed with this telling me how much they are "Helping" me by doing this crap. Perfect example of a monolithic company being so completely separated and oblivious to what the real consumer on the street needs from their products.
 
And yes I'm aware hotmail has sucked for a veeeery long time and should have dropped them ages ago but it worked for my needs. Just never in a million years thought they would be so insane as to pull this kind of crap. It makes no sense.
 
/angry "old" guy rant

Beepster
And yes I'm aware hotmail has sucked for a veeeery long time and should have dropped them ages ago but it worked for my needs. 

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Beep. 
 
As much as I hate Outlook and its glitches, I've been using my Hotmail account as my de facto e-mail address for almost 15 years and never had any serious issue. 
 
As with everything, successful developers reach a point where you wish they'd just leave things alone. But they don't...
 
If I were rich, I'd buy a few dozens current Mac and have those running Mountain Lion and never upgrade a thing, ever again. These days, when it comes to OS and e-mail and utilities, technology seems to take a mostly counterproductive turn from my perpective, in terms of my needs. 
 
Outlook didn't do a thing for me. I'd revert to my old, simple Hotmail any day if I could.

Rain

Beepster
And yes I'm aware hotmail has sucked for a veeeery long time and should have dropped them ages ago but it worked for my needs. 

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Beep. 
 
As much as I hate Outlook and its glitches, I've been using my Hotmail account as my de facto e-mail address for almost 15 years and never had any serious issue. 
 
As with everything, successful developers reach a point where you wish they'd just leave things alone. But they don't...
 
If I were rich, I'd buy a few dozens current Mac and have those running Mountain Lion and never upgrade a thing, ever again. These days, when it comes to OS and e-mail and utilities, technology seems to take a mostly counterproductive turn from my perpective, in terms of my needs. 
 
Outlook didn't do a thing for me. I'd revert to my old, simple Hotmail any day if I could.

Hiya, Rain. Thanks and it is my own "fault" I guess for not always logging in or whatever it is they want me to do.
 
The weirdest thing though about today was even after I bounced around between the linked accounts to swipe the confrim codes once I got into the account there was no readily apparent way to get at my inbox. Is this not normal?
 
Usually there would be a link that sends me to my inbox either through my profile name or somewhere at the top of the page but it was some vaguely labeled link at the bottom of the page buried in with a ton of MS links. It was really weird.
 
Anyway... doesn't matter. They wiped all my stuff so that's that. It's of no use to me anymore. I'm not really a regular email checker so if they want to penalize me for that then it just ain't the service for me. I'm however going to have to go through all my records though to see what I have registered where and with what as far as product accounts and stuff in case this turns into an accoutn access problem. I've already migrated a lot of stuff that I need access to regularly away from HM but there are MANY things still registered with those accounts. It will be time consuming.
 
Cheers.

Hi, sharke. That sucks and I think a lot of the security breaches with HM is why they did a lot of this stuff. Once again though it's like they are trying to emulate the things that work for their competitors (the impression I got just now was some bizzarro mish mash of the Apple and Google accoutn models) but failing miserably at it.
 
It feels like it's such a huge company that has so many various teams that all this stuff gets thrown against the wall, and individually they might be good ideas based on consumer input, but at the end of the day it turns into the "Homer" car. That final step of siphoning out the silly stuff and making sure it actually makes sense for the end user gets completely overlooked and this is what we get. Crazy.
 
It really is sad too because MS has such a massive talent pool and are capable of great things. I wish they would stop trying to keep up with the proverbial "Jones'" and get back to developing logical, useful tools and innovations in house.
 
Where the heck is Bill? Get your minions under control, dude!

bapu
a) I have my own domain, those emails are forwarded to my isp's email account.
b) my isp email is web based. I've been with them since 2002. Have not lost an email yet (other than pilot error). 
 
Not sure what that means, but I have to post sumpin' roight?

I just need to start being a little SMRTer. It's a massive endeavor.
 
Turns out computers WEREN'T just a fad. Who knew?

bapu
I've been programming since 1978 (professionally coded in Fortran, Cobol and HP Basic within the first four years).
 
I've built at least 100 PC/Servers in that time.
 
They still seem like a fad to me.

I just KNOW my buggy whip stocks are going to skyrocket again any day now.
 
ANY... DAY... NOW!
 

I have often wondered about MS trying to get everything in one account under one security key/password. Makes it easy for them to link all kinds of things to your account, but it sort of flies in the face of the best security advice for the past half century: never use the same password in two different accounts. Hack one, you hack them all.

Yup, every time they mess with it they seem to make it worse. I have three accounts which used to be linked to one sign on, now I have to sign in to all three seperately "for my own security" and if I don't do it every so oftem they get wiped. There is nothing of value to anyone in either of them, so I don't really care if being hacked lets people in to all three. Can I not make that decision myself like I used to ? NO. The waste of screen space is another bug bear - why take a quarter of the available screen space with the the "To" section - used to be one simple line ! Why do I need an image of myself next to sender? I don't even need to see my name FFS ! I know who I am and what I look like ! The biggest though is the changes to the blocking rules. I regularly get crap promising supermarket vouchers if I reply that all come from a variation of the same basic address. I used to be able to block all addresses that contained the similar bits in one instruction, now I have to block them individually each time. Grrr!
As much as it sucks, talking to friends who use other providers it seems that the fixing what isn't broken is a habit of them all, so I stick with it - better the devil you know and all that. Gmail not an option to me, don't like google for many reasons, don't even use the search engine any more. It even feels like you tube is watching your every move since they got hold of it.
 
Remember, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not watching you ! ;)

BTW with Gmail I always use the stripped down version "For Older Browsers" that doesn't require any extra scripts. I do the same with Facebook (Mobile Version). Makes it load faster and I think it screws up some of their prying eyes bullpizzle.