Why does my Outlook account keep getting locked?

Greetings,

My name is Rhaine, I'm Independent Community Advisor. I am here to help.
I am also a Microsoft account user. Let us work together to sort this out.

There a few things we need to consider why you are getting that notification for unusual activity.

Are you using a VPN connection?
Are you accessing your device to a different computer or location?

This may happens if there's an unusual login in your account.

To check your account activity you can go to this link below, check if someone else trying to access your account.

https://account.live.com/Activity


Here are the steps you can try.

You can go to this link and add the device you are using to access your Microsoft account.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/455876....

You can also turned on the two steps verification for you to get notified via text or email if someone else trying to access your account without your knowledge.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/402858...

To verify that your email address address go to this link
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/402627...


I hope the information above helps. Please let me know if you have further questions, I'll be more than happy to help.


Have a wonderful day ahead and stay safe.

With Warm Regards,
Rhaine C.

Hi Rhaine,

    thanks for your reply. I've consistently used the same laptop to access the account but have not registered it (or any other device) against the account. I also use different browsers (Chrome, AVG Secure Browser & Internet Explorer), while often logged in to another account (my work & personal email addresses are both office 365) on another browser at the same time. I'm not using a VPN as such but working mobile (connecting via different WIFI networks) & using DHCP, so no guarantee of a fixed IP address & at least one of the ISPs I sometimes connect through, seems to obscure my IP address (perhaps similar to the effect of using a VPN connection). I've also sent emails to several friends who weren't in my contacts (just pasting their address directly into the TO: field).

    I already checked https://account.live.com/Activity and all the logons it lists, appear to correspond to times when I logged on.

    I note several possible issues that Microsoft could conceivably consider "unusual" (e.g. unregistered device, obfuscated IP, changing browser, concurrent sessions, recipients not in my contacts list, etc.); I suppose I could attempt to address some of these on a trial & error basis, hoping the problem then goes away but is there any way to find out what specific "unusual activity" triggered Microsoft to lock the account, so that I can focus my efforts on that particular issue (e.g. registering my laptop probably wouldn't help much if they're locking the account because of an obfuscated IP address)?

Regards,

    Alan

i am also being locked out of my accounts when i try reset passwords says something wrong and i also fill out forms and says cant authorise my account. i also pay for a onedrive storage and cannot access this either and it is my photo storage so no backup elsewhere. i have created another account so i can ask on here as wont allow me too as account locked

Greetings Alan,

I appreciate your swift response, please try to observe if issue persist after performing those steps.
With regards to isolate the cause of the unusual activity we cant really determine what triggers it.
I assumed that your ISP triggers the unusual activity if they change IP, which is similar using a VPN.

I can certainly understand where are you coming from how inconvenience this to you to keep on verifying your account.
We need to check if issue persist, we can also ask assistance from other community volunteer with their feedback and suggestion with this since this is an open forum.

I'll look forward for your response, please let me know if issue persist.

Have a wonderful day ahead and stay safe.

With Warm Regards,
Rhaine C.

Thanks Rhaine.

     It looks like one of the things to try would be registering my laptop but unfortunately the link you sent me for this, doesn't work seem to work for my laptop as it's not Windows 10 (it's dual-boot, running either Linux or Windows 7, depending what else I'm doing at the time). Can you offer any advice how to register devices that aren't Windows 10?

Regards,

    Alan

Greetings,

I appreciate your time and effort getting back to this thread, for Windows 7 or Linux users there is no option to add the device. We can ask assistance from other community volunteers if they have feedback and suggestion with this issue.

Sincerely,
Rhaine C.

Hi Rhaine,

    it sounds like I just don't fit Microsoft's profile of a typical user, so I'm likely to keep triggering whatever system they use to detect "unusual activity" & need to frequently unlock my account.

    Thanks for your efforts all the same.

Regards,

    Alan