We think that someone else might have accessed the Microsoft account

Lovely answers Microsoft. Very specific and helpful... 

P.S. That's an extremely low strategy to extract more personal info. Using fear as means to make your clients give you more info... hmm what does that remind you of?

Hi Jan,

Welcome to Microsoft Community. Let us help you on you concern.

I understand that you got an email coming from Microsoft prompting you to change your password. It's possible that the email is trying to phish information from you. If you suspect that the email you received is not legit, and if you have access to your account with no issues, you can simply ignore it or mark it as Junk. You can also check this link for more information on phishing emails.

If you want us to look into the source of the email to determine if it really came from Microsoft, please contact us in private through the link below (as we may require personal information for investigation).

**Click here to go to the private support e-form**

We're looking forward to your ticket submission.

Thanks,

Rhyan

I too have the same question you have.   I really would be curious what triggers Microsoft to send out these notices.   

One reason I ask is because I work for a large organization as an email administrator and a lot of our users have linked their work email to a Microsoft account.  In the past week or so quite a few users have gotten this same email from Microsoft that you got.   (myself included) 

With so many phishing schemes out there some users are suspicious of this email, which is a good thing, but we both know the email is from Microsoft and legit.  It is just kind of frustrating Microsoft is sending out so many of these lately.    If this is Microsoft's attempt to get users to reset their passwords, they don't they just come out and state that is their objective?    I have seen enough of my users getting this very same email in the past week or so that it really is starting to look like this is just Microsoft's way of telling users they need to reset their password.    If Microsoft wants everyone to reset their password, why don't they just come out and say that rather then worry so many users about a possible account breach which probably hasn't even happened.

I think there is more to this email from Microsoft then we will ever know....  

Just my 2 cents worth.....

Thanks,

Dennis

Indeed Dennis,

some of my friends have received this e-mail recently as well and I also suspect the reason is just to force us to change the password, like when it does not meet the current password requirements or similar.

Using security threats to cover this request though, is not only unprofessional but also unnecessarily scary for the users.

Jan

Yes, pretty much the same response to my secure message to them as well.   It doesn't appear we will really get an answers to why they have sent out all these notices recently.   

I do appreciate Microsoft being proactive and trying to warn users about any possible account compromises, but I think they could be a little more "tactful" in how they go about doing this.  Also, the message I got from them really almost does look like a phishing email so they could probably do a better job with that message and make it a little more "official looking".  

I guess this is just a sad reality of the world we live in where we have to always be worried about our security online and the companies are doing the best they can to deal with this.  I just personally feel in this instance Microsoft could probably handle it a little better then just trying to scare users every time they detect a little abnormality with a user account and forcing a password change. 

I am not really complaining though and I do understand, but sometimes I wish companies would be little more honest and forthcoming about things rather then just trying to use "blanket" emails for any and all issues and abnormalities.