My 12-year-old son's Microsoft account appears to have been taken over

Hey there, kasia grzesik

Account hijacking often begins with social engineering or phishing. Rather than directly ‘hacking’ an account, an attacker may try to convince the account owner to provide the information needed to gain access.

One example is a Discord server that claims to be ‘official’. A child joining the server may be asked to complete a verification process involving their Microsoft account. The victim may believe that they are verifying or signing into their own account, when they are actually providing information to an attacker.

Once access has been gained, the attacker may change the account’s security information and aliases to make recovery more difficult. The legitimate owner may not realise what has happened until they can no longer sign in.

Please can you use the sign-in helper tool here: https://aka.ms/sign-in-helper

Please enter your son's Microsoft account in the sign-in helper tool. This tool will then detect if there are any problems with the account, and should provide you with an option to try and recover the Microsoft account. Hopefully the tool will direct you to the Microsoft account recovery form here: https://support.xbox.com/forms/recover-your-microsoft-account

If you do get directed to that form, please complete the form the best you can. Please make sure you have a working email you can use for the communications. Please add [email protected] to your safe senders list or contact list. You will get an email from this address asking for further information if needed.

Hope this helps,
Nathan