hacker purged my Inbox, Sent, and Recoverable emails.

Question

My personal account was compromised yesterday, 24 March. The hacker purged my Inbox, Sent, and Recoverable Items. There not in the 'Recover Items deleted", nor the recoverable box, I checked all my folders and could not find them.

I knew of the hacks from friends who were getting suspicious emails from me.

I am not sure of the order of the chain events of what I found and what I did. But I think I started with changing my password (pw). My original pw was not recognized so I had to have a code sent to another email account. At this point I am just starting to investigate the issue. I still have all my emails. I thought at first it was spoofing but no I was hacked. I turned off a bunch of rules that I had used in the past. I also found an unknown device on my MS account which I removed. While I was trying to figure out via Chatbot and toggling back and forth between account activity, unknown devices and rules, Well some of the rules were turned back on and some point I noticed my inbox etc was empty. I immediately turned those rules off, added my phone # to my account and took away the email, ( I was originally using for authentication), and changed the password once more. I believe my account is now secure.

But like I said they purged my In, Out, Deleted emails, Include Recover Items, and Recover. I checked all my folders. They still had old emails in them but none of the emails that were purged from the aforementioned folders. They had to do this pretty fast.

I am hoping that the emails are still on the MS server. Looking for some guidance on retrieving these emails.

Any and all help is most appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Jim,

What you see is very common scenario after a hacked account. Some people have had success with contacting Microsoft to recover the Emails, not all I am afraid. I lay the steps to contact Microsoft support below:

Please contact Microsoft Support for further assistance.

Please go to the https://support.microsoft.com/contactus page

Type "Billing" and press Enter.

Please click on the "Contact support" button at the bottom.

Select the Product and Category for support based on your requirements.

The available support methods will be shown to you.

I hope this information helps. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to reach out.

Otherwise, please take a moment to rate the answer. Wishing you good luck!

Answer 2

Based on the available information, there is no supported way in the provided guidance to restore Outlook.com emails that have already been fully purged from Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, and the “Recover items deleted from this folder” (Recoverable Items) area.

What can still be done is:

1. Verify that messages are not simply hidden or moved:
   • In Outlook.com on the web, select Filter above the message list and choose All to ensure no filters are hiding items.
   • Check Rules (Inbox rules and Sweep rules) to confirm no rule is still moving or deleting messages unexpectedly. Go to the Outlook.com Rules settings page and remove or correct any suspicious rules.
   • Check the Archive folder and any custom folders to ensure messages were not moved there.
2. Confirm the account is now secure so no further data is lost:
   • Review Recent activity for the Microsoft account to confirm there are no ongoing suspicious sign-ins.
   • If the account was compromised, follow the steps to recover and secure a hacked Microsoft account: run a malware scan on devices, change the password, and review connected accounts, forwarding, and automatic replies.

If the messages are not visible after clearing filters, checking rules, Archive, and all folders (including Recoverable Items), the documentation and Q&A content provided do not describe any additional recovery mechanism for a consumer Outlook.com mailbox beyond what has already been tried.

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References:

• Email is missing from your Outlook.com inbox
• How to recover a hacked or compromised Microsoft account
• Respond to a compromised cloud email account
• My personal hotmail account hacked by hacker with authentication app enabled. - Microsoft Q&A
• My account got hacked - Microsoft Q&A
• Hacker set up continuous draft ransomware email - Microsoft Q&A