It is actually safe to ignore them. It means either someone has an email address similar to yours, or a bot of some sort has you email address and only your email address.
Essentially, someone or something goes to the login screen, enters your login, and says “I don’t have the password, let me in!”.
Sending a code to your email like this is the first step in letting someone in without the password, or more specifically to having them reset it.
Since the email is to check “did you ask for this?”, doing nothing tells them that you did not.
If you want some extra peace of mind: https://account.live.com/Activity should show you any recent login activity which you can use to confirm that no one has gotten in.
Also, use two factor, a password manager, and keep your recovery codes somewhere safe. The usual security person mantra. :)
This is all good information and seems well intentioned, but it’s worth pointing out in a post about account security that clicking links provided by others and giving it your login information is very unwise (even/especially links in emails like these). For the link you provided, it’d be better to recommend going through a primary microsoft page or login that can be confirmed by the user and getting to the activity history page from there
You can create an email alias for your Microsoft account and then only enable login from that account. If you then do not use that email for anything but the login, you should be pretty safe from credential stuffing attacks.
I had a very similar issue with multiple failed login attempts and changing my login email stopped it right away.
Yup, that would indicate that likely a bot is trying to guess it’s way in.
You are still safe.
The only weird thing here is that Microsoft lets such things bother you instead of guessing that you didn’t teleport to Brazil and instead putting a little extra burden on the Brazil end before sending you an email.
If you’re still feeling worried, the biggest thing you can do is enable two-factor auth (which you should do anyway), or even better: enable something like passkeys which are very secure and also easier than username/password.
Two-factor/password manager is the “remember to brush and floss” of the security industry, so… Please do those things. :)
It is actually safe to ignore them. It means either someone has an email address similar to yours, or a bot of some sort has you email address and only your email address.
Essentially, someone or something goes to the login screen, enters your login, and says “I don’t have the password, let me in!”.
Sending a code to your email like this is the first step in letting someone in without the password, or more specifically to having them reset it.
Since the email is to check “did you ask for this?”, doing nothing tells them that you did not.
If you want some extra peace of mind: https://account.live.com/Activity should show you any recent login activity which you can use to confirm that no one has gotten in.
Also, use two factor, a password manager, and keep your recovery codes somewhere safe. The usual security person mantra. :)
This is all good information and seems well intentioned, but it’s worth pointing out in a post about account security that clicking links provided by others and giving it your login information is very unwise (even/especially links in emails like these). For the link you provided, it’d be better to recommend going through a primary microsoft page or login that can be confirmed by the user and getting to the activity history page from there
Well, I found the recent activity and none of these were me. At least they all appear to say Unsuccessful sign-in.
You can create an email alias for your Microsoft account and then only enable login from that account. If you then do not use that email for anything but the login, you should be pretty safe from credential stuffing attacks.
I had a very similar issue with multiple failed login attempts and changing my login email stopped it right away.
Yup, that would indicate that likely a bot is trying to guess it’s way in.
You are still safe.
The only weird thing here is that Microsoft lets such things bother you instead of guessing that you didn’t teleport to Brazil and instead putting a little extra burden on the Brazil end before sending you an email.
If you’re still feeling worried, the biggest thing you can do is enable two-factor auth (which you should do anyway), or even better: enable something like passkeys which are very secure and also easier than username/password.
Two-factor/password manager is the “remember to brush and floss” of the security industry, so… Please do those things. :)