I succesfully recovered my 18 year old Microsoft/Xbox account!

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I CAN SAY, IF YOU DON'T ALREADY HAVE 2FA ACTIVE ON YOUR ACCOUNT, DO IT NOW! IT IS THE BEST DEFENSE TO KEEP YOUR ACCOUNT SECURE!

Ok I can't believe they actually did it!

My entire account was compromised due to downloading a false version of a reputable save editor for No Man's Sky that was infected with a malware that gave the bad actors my session token. They were able to get into my recovery email which then got them access to my Microsoft account then they changed the main login and deleted all my recovery options which completely locked me out. Just the fact that changing the main login on a Microsoft account alone is absolutely laughable. The fact that I was able to successfully recover all my other various stolen accounts much more easily than my Microsoft account is also a joke. Microsoft needs to get their fucking shit together!

To my luck the hackers did not succesfully enable 2FA on my account which is very important for Microslops horrendous recovery support. My account was stolen on August 28th and I just got back into it this morning after weeks of multiple different recovery forms and going in circles with Microsofts various recovery teams. Honestly at the end of the day I don't know which avenue worked or what I might have done differently that finally worked. So I will try to give as much advice as I can incase anyone else is currently going through this. FIrst of all Microsofts traditional support chat is completely useless, the teams that actually handle these cases are the Account Safety Team (msaccountsafety@microsoft.com) and CDOC Case Management (cdoccm@microsoft.com). If you submit any of the 3 recovery forms they go straight to those teams, support chat has absolutely no power to access these cases or even communicate directly with these teams. I've gotten conflicting statements from support chat on whether or no they can check the status of the cases, but its pretty much irrelevent. Either way Microsoft has 3 different account recovery forms, I know it's ridicoulous!

https://account.live.com/acsr

https://www.microsoft.com/digitalsafety/account-reinstatement?SilentAuth=1&wa=wsignin1.0

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/forms/recover-your-microsoft-account

At the end of the day I don't know which of these forms finally got me to the finish line. It's diabolical! I just kept spamming each form as many times as I could. And each one will provide you with an automated response email that you can proceed from. Each time you will be provided with a unique service request SIR number, it's most crucial that you save those numbers so you can reference them in follow up cases. I mentioned 2FA earlier, supposedly if an account is breached and the hackers enable 2FA there's absolutely nothing Microsoft can do to recover your account, but I don't know how true that is. The best advice I can give is just be persistent! Fill out each of the recovery forms as many times as you can, provide as much truthful information on the forms as you can, and ignore people who claim that account recovery is hopeless!

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I CAN SAY, IF YOU DON'T ALREADY HAVE 2FA ACTIVE ON YOUR ACCOUNT, DO IT NOW! IT IS THE BEST DEFENSE TO KEEP YOUR ACCOUNT SECURE!