Microsoft deletes man’s hacked One Drive with 25 years of photos and games — as 'irreversible' action prompts him to bemoan ‘I relied on Microsoft to keep that safe’ | Tech Radar
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Microsoft deletes man’s hacked One Drive with 25 years of photos and games — as 'irreversible' action prompts him to bemoan ‘I relied on Microsoft to keep that safe’
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Microsoft deleted a user’s One Drive account after it was compromised
This resulted in the loss of 25 years’ worth of photos and games
The incident is a reminder to use multiple backup solutions
How much do you have stored in your Microsoft account? Consider all the photos and documents backed up to One Drive, the games and apps linked to your username, and all the rest. Many of us have a lot stored there, but as one Microsoft user recently found out, it can all be taken away in an instant — with Microsoft itself doing the deleting.
Posting on X, Joshua Khane related how a recent hack of their account led to Microsoft taking the nuclear option and removing 25 years’ worth of data, including photos of their infant son and “thousands of Euros spent on games.”
Khane shared an email from Microsoft explaining that, since “unauthorized access occurred” on their account — meaning a likely compromise by hackers — “we have permanently suspended the account.” Microsoft confirmed that “this action is irreversible … Additionally, if you had files stored in One Drive, those files are no longer accessible. Due to encryption and privacy safeguards, even our engineers cannot retrieve them.”
The move left Khane incensed, with the disbelieving user condemning Microsoft’s decision not to restore their account: “One of the biggest companies ever couldn’t do that so they just deleted that sh*t like it was nothing??”
“Even though the security could be tighter from my side (lessons are learned),” they added, “it bothers me the most that Microsoft says that they cannot recover my account and suspended it … Thousands of Euros are gone down the drain as I’ve lost all my games also! Couldn’t back those up and I relied on Microsoft to keep that safe, even if I got compromised!”
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After the saga was posted on Reddit, other users chimed in with similar stories of their own. “Happened to me also,” said one user. “I had payment proof and everything going back 20 years. They said sorry, best we can do is lock your account for good.”
Another had a piece of advice for Khane: “When this happened to me, I created the new account and sent an email to them (on the same thread) with the new account info. They basically cloned the old account into the new one and I got everything back.” Elsewhere, many users recommended Khane take legal action against Microsoft.
If you want to avoid a similar fate, it’s important that you don’t just back up your important documents to one source — be that cloud storage like One Drive or an external storage drive. If something goes wrong, your only copy has vanished into the ether.
Instead, build redundancy into your backups. Use a cloud backup service like Backblaze and a local NAS or offline archive drive. If possible, ensure your backups are in different physical locations, including one off the premises.
As Redditor Linesey rightly suggested, “Get a NAS, get an off-site location like a safe deposit box for cold storage, and then use the cloud if you really want to, as another layer.” That way, you’ve got at least one fallback option if a firm like Microsoft decides to delete your data without warning.
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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as Tech Radar, Alex writes for i More, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at Mac Format magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.
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