How To Close or Cancel Hotmail Account

For six months now, I've tried to cancel my Hotmail account. I hadn't used it in over 2 years, but an old college friend recently informed me that they had received spam email from my old hotmail account. After logging in, I saw that someone (hacked/virus/who knows) had sent an email to every single one of my contacts (old boyfriends, old friends, old employers) telling them about my love of viagra, linking them to a phishing/spam site. While most people would know that the viagra email was spam, it's not the greatest way to start up communication with long lost friends.

**Back in 2000, before the days of Gmail, I used hotmail as my main email for college. I have since moved onto Gmail and don't use hotmail at all. I only log in when I get spam notifications from people I know/used to know.

I went through all of the steps to try to cancel hotmail: clicking on the "close hotmail account," trying to figure out what type of paid account I had, researching solutions on the Internet, and finally, contacting the hotmail help moderators. I'm still trying to get a hold of them. 

After going through all of the efforts to find how to close my account on my own, I finally found the Windows Live Help site. Not a big help there either.

There are thousands of questions and answers that all say the same thing:

I have tried to close my hotmail account and cannot. It says I have a billing account open but when I go to close it, it says I have no billing account.

The template answer that Windows Live Help moderators give, when they do respond to questions, is:

I’ve checked your account and it’s currently associated with "MSN Mobile SMS Communications 1" subscription. Please contact your mobile phone carrier and let them know that you would like to have your subscription cancelled. And inform them that you need this subscription removed so that you can close your Windows Live ID.

The Windows Live Team says that if you can't close your account because it's tied to a paid account but the billing screen says it doesn't know of a paid account, you should go to these links:

• Close your account (even if you've already tried this a million times and are reaching out for help, they think you should give it one more try)
• Contact MS Mobile Support (the moderators at Windows Live Help believe that most of the paid account messaging is due to setting up an SMS account/notifications account -- there's no place to cancel this account online, though, you'll have to call, email, beg for help to have Windows Live help you cancel it)
• Once your MS Mobile Account is cancelled, go back and try to cancel your hotmail account. Good luck!

One user, after reading all the responses, questions, and answers (non-answers) from moderators became so frustrated that he posted:

Could you go ahead and close my f*ing (removed info by moderator) email and windows live account?? Im sick of seeing these "try this" replys, because to be honest...not only do these endless loops and crap solutions not work, but i think it's rediculous that it requires so much work to simply close an account. I am fed up with windows live, its terrible support, and its cumbersome 'solutions'. Apparently its too easy to just create a close all button. And doing a little internet search proves my case, there shouldnt be so many forums dedicated to closing an account.

To view the whole "Close My Hotmail Account" thread on Windows Live forum, visit here.

That title is deceiving as I haven't found a solution yet. Ask Windows Live Help and they give you the run around. If so many people are having the same issue, why don't they just create a button on hotmail/live accounts that say "Cancel Your MSN Mobile Subscription"? They wouldn't have to pay a million people to answer the same question over and over and over again while not really offering any solutions.

I'll keep this section updated as I continue to search for a solution. Until then, I'll be spending a lot more time in hotmail trying to stop spam messages from going out. You can also prevent spam messages from being sent out (kind of) by:

• Deleting your contacts
• Deleting all emails: sent, saved, drafts, received, deleted
• Deleting all folders

Have you found a solution to cancelling your Hotmail account when you receive the notification that the account is tied to a paid account? Let us know in the comments.

**Once you "cancel" your account, your hotmail isn't truly cancelled. From there, it's still live for another 365 days and doesn't go away until you haven't logged in for 365 days. Hard to not log in when you receive notices that spam is being sent from your account.

I was checking Twitter today and saw a few tweets from people who hadn't checked their hotmail accounts in awhile and were getting notifications that spam was being sent from their accounts yesterday.

I hadn't checked my hotmail account in awhile, so after seeing those messages, I decided to log in. I was presented with this message:

Instead of submitting my phone number, I'm leaving it blocked in hopes that that will end this hotmail mess. How did my account get blocked? I have no idea. I deleted all of my contacts, emails (outgoing and incoming), saved messages/folders...everything. I had hoped that would mean spammers couldn't send anything out. I also wrote that message to the hotmail forum complaining about the attacks and the run-around messages I was receiving when trying to close my account.

So, I suggest you do the same. If you're trying to DELETE your hotmail account but can't, delete all messages/contacts/information then write on the forums with your hotmail account address, notifying them of all the steps you've taken to delete your account without success. Hotmail moderators have to respond to your message quickly when you provide your email address, for privacy reasons. You'll soon see a "moderator edited for privacy" note on your forum message where your email address has been removed. Perhaps if they get enough mail about the issues that come up when trying to close a spammed hotmail account, they'll either help you out or make the process simpler.