Hotmail emails archive to computer hard drive.

kings53man

Hello,

I am getting strange messages that my hotmail account was accessed illegally by some suspicious group from a foreign country.

Today I got a ransom message - pay otherwise they will send bad things about me to everyone I know, asking for money.
I am not going to send money anyway for sure.

I am thinking of closing the hotmail account but would like to archive messages to hard drive before.
I found steps to do this manually - one email at a time.
Some software utilities were listed but not sure if they are good.

So looking for some advice/software tool you have used?

Thanks,
Binod

Observant1

Your computer may be infected with a virus or malware.
If you haven't done so already, execute a virus scan and then use Malwarebytes for good measure.

I'm not that familiar with Hotmail.
It seems there isn't a way to archive all emails without using third-party software.
If you decide to utilize third-party software, research the software/company carefully before using the product.

Crash

In future, I might suggest protonmail. Privacy and security are priorities. It's what I use, apart from a couple of junk-email accounts. You can go premium, but I just use the free version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProtonMail

https://proton.me/mail/pricing?ref=hdrbtn

Mona

I have an old MSN email account newer (5 years) Hotmail account. Both can be accessed on Hotmail.com.

Approximately 3 years ago, I started to receive these extortion emails at my MSN email (I never had a problem with my Hotmail account). I changed my password and notified the FBI. These extortion emails lasted about 1 month.

While I rarely use my MSN email, I do receive a considerable amount of spam. The nature of the spam leads me to believe that it is a function of the extortion emails. I guess "they" figured if they could not get money from me, they would be a royal pain in the a**. This problem did not infect my PC with a virus or malware. I think that I had Windows Defender back then and a few years ago I added the free versions of Malwarebytes, Glary Utilities, and CCleaner.

Sven

What you are experiencing are “spam’ emails, unless you click or download enclosed links on these emails. For now, your computer is NOT infected with malware or virus.

Generally, these emails can come from any countries, typically from Eastern European counties, Russia, Iran, Turkey and other bad actors. So, do not clink on any links on your emails, or reply to them.

If you have click on the links, then there is a good possibility you may have imported the malware. Then you may have compromise you hard drive. But that is a different topic.

For now, assuming you have not click on any links and the hard drive is intact, several things you can do on your existing email account:

1. Create filters on your email browsers. When you hover you arrow over the email sender, it provides the email address. Pay attention to the “extension part” of the address so to alter yourself without even open the email. “.tu” is from Turkey; “ru” is from Russia. You can tell the filter to put these suspicious email into trash directly so you don’t receive them in the future. I create a large number filter parameters (email extension, email address, sender, and many more) and that filter out large number of garbage emails. New spam emails will pop up, but you can continue to squash them with filters and simply not open them. They may sound threatening, but nothing is harm until they are proven so.

2. Avoid certain email accounts: yahoo (the worst). Please use the one from your internet provider. If necessary, create several of them. Gmail is okay, but i avoid them, and create new email account using my internet provider.

3. Be careful not to share personal informationincluding social security #, birthday, bank/brokerage account number, (certainly) password in Non-secured email unless you absolutely sure of the recipients. That is how someone can create identity theft on your behalf.

Anna

Maybe this thread over at retire-early might ease your mind. Everyone, or many, with older hotmail accounts started getting spammed like crazy several weeks ago. I set my hotmail account to block all incoming email except email from my brother-in-law. I would have deleted the account if I felt he wouldn't be frustrated by it. They seem to be just random junk/spam and don't seem to be tailored to an individual. It's like many hotmail accounts receive the same spam hoping a few will act on it.
Sudden Flood of Spam emails

MrRuffles

In order to archive your Hotmail messages locally, you need to get an email application for your computer. You connect this to your Hotmail account and download your emails to your computer rather than accessing them through a web browser.. Most also have ways of archiving your emails. One example (out of many) is the venerable Thunderbird: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ (You could also use Outlook since Hotmail is a legacy part of the MS ecosystem.)

Mona

@Sven no, I do not click and open the links or reply to the emails. Thank you for the tips.

Sven

Terrific! Otherwise, these suspicious emails reside on the internet provider’s server, not on your hard drive. Clinking on the embedded link or reply to the email would allow them to access your hard drive.

kings53man

Thanks to everyone for wonderful suggestions. I really really really appreciate them.

I like the plan to use protonmail and will create an email account and use it with all the sites I interact with so only truly junk mails will go to hotmail account and I will close it after monitoring for few months.

B

carew388

I use mailfence.com and haven't had any issues yet-they're based in Belgium.

Crash

just started a new account at mailfence. Thanks, @carew388.

carew388

+1