Windows 10: Can security on a Microsoft account email address be compromised?

There have been recent attempts to connect to my MS account which the records in View Account Activity show as unsuccessful but these have coincided with very suspicious phishing attacks on the same mailbox.The account activity shows multiple "IMAP Autosynch" attempts obviously from VPN disguised locations such as Bulgaria, Syria etc.Shortly after these, phishing emails targeting specific companies that I deal with have been sent to the same email account.A couple may be coincidental, but there are just too many specific ones for it not to imply that someone is reading the emails in my account

:)

 

Unauthorized Emails from my account?

It is more than likely that your email account was hacked, either by a virus sniffing your password, or just simply hacked.

Either way, change your password on your email account. Unfortunately the damage by already be done. They already have your contact list and your email address associated with that contact list. There is nothing stopping them from sending out emails using their own SMTP servers to everyone on your contact list and claiming the emails are from your email address. They don't actually have to have access to your yahoo account or even any yahoo server to send emails to people that come from your address.

 

Microsoft Account: Hacker changed security email address

Can you add a new phone & then download the authenticator app to said phone & authenticate that way?

Or add a new email as backup?

Can you change the account password?

If you follow the instructions here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-bil... can you not add another email
account where you can receive the code?

If you can sign in to the account check the activity & when you see the hacker’s details click on ‘This wasn’t me’ to see what options you’re offered.

If the answer is no due to security settings then only Microsoft can assist you to recover the account.

The only other option is to create a new Microsoft account using a different email address & turn on 2-step authentication immediately.

 

Compromised Microsoft account

I received an email from Microsoft that the account associated my email address *** Email address is removed for privacy *** had been compromised because of password changes etc. Unfortunately since this wasn't my main account I used different variations of my name and Birthday etc so
when filling out the info for the account recovery the automated system will not approve me.

What I would normally do with any other provider is just reset the password through the original email address (*** Email address is removed for privacy ***) or prove I still have control of that email, which I do. But for some reason the account recovery process is assuming that my original
email address is compromised and is forcing me to use a secondary email account.

It is just crazy that I am sitting here with full access to the primary email for the account but no processes I can find for account recovery include any correspondence with it.

Can anyone shed any light on how to remedy this? It is an older account but an important one because I think it is the one I used to set up Windows 10 on my laptop and I don't know how much this might compromises any of the info on my laptop.

***Modified title from: Really need advice on uniquely compromised account.***