[German]I have reported several times on sudden Microsoft account suspensions. Suddenly, out of the blue, access to your Microsoft account is blocked. Everything connected to the account falls into digital nirvana. Now it has happened to a LibreOffice developer whose Microsoft account was suspended. The account has since been restored.
A reader's note on the incident
Ihadn't noticed it because I spent less time on IT websites that week. But my readers keep me informed about such things. Reader jbz alerted me to the incident on Mastodon via the following post.
The facts are well known: a user with a Microsoft account discovers that it has been blocked without warning. The only reason given was "violation of the terms of use." Attempts to find out more were unsuccessful. The account remained blocked.
Our colleagues at neowin.net have taken up the case here. What makes this case particularly noteworthy is the fact that the person concerned was a developer for the LibreOffice project. Mike Kaganski made the case public on his blog. On Monday, July 21, 2025, the person affected attempted to send something to the LibreOffice developer mailing list. This is not unusual if you have your own email account with a free email provider or your own domain with an email account. However, the person affected relied on a Microsoft Hotmail account and was literally left in the cold.
He received a message in Thunderbird stating that the email could not be sent. After several unsuccessful attempts, he received the message shown below, presumably when logging into his Hotmail account.
He received a message stating that his Hotmail account had been blocked for violating the terms of use. Microsoft had detected activity that constituted a violation.
The person affected blames a stupid AI that is worse than good old filters (which I doubt, as account suspensions have also occurred with filters). I also assume that the email to the LibreOffice mailing list was the reason for the suspension – presumably the trigger had already been activated beforehand. But it's the same old story: you rely on Microsoft's online accounts and get locked out. Everything associated with the account is then pulverized and gone.
In the above case, there was a "happy ending" for the person concerned. After a week, he regained access to the account, as he mentions in this comment. But he has learned his lesson and will refrain from using Microsoft services of this kind in the future.
The incident shows the risk of online accounts used to organize your life. If such an account is suspended, you are digitally tilted. It's independant of Apple, Meta, Google or Microsoft or other vendors. Meta AI killed my Facebook page, because "my posts violates Meta standards". The incident: I blogged about Facebook scam on this platform shown in ads.
Man, can you imagine how happy I was not to be dependent on this Facebook site? I hadn't listened to the social media gurus and built up a huge follower community. So it only affected a few hundred subscribers (my German IT blog has up to 40,000 visitors per day).
What I criticize most, especially at Microsoft, is that you are pushed toward Microsoft accounts at every turn (I'm glad I work partly on Linux and have Windows 10 2019 Enterprise LTSC with local accounts on some systems).
If a Microsoft account is closed, you will never find out the reason, you have no right of appeal (appeals are automatically rejected by bots), and you lose all the functions associated with the account. The only option would be to take legal action (which is expensive and time-consuming). Therefore, "stay away from Microsoft and its online accounts wherever possible."
Similar articles:
Google account blocked and police action because of toddler photos for the doctor
Stop: Arbitrary blocking of Microsoft Accounts
Microsoft's account suspensions and the OneDrive 'nude' photos
Legal action against arbitrary Microsoft account suspension in Europe
When the degoo bot closes your lifelong account …
Will Samsung users soon face Microsoft account lockout and loose access to content?
Microsoft account lockout, an exemplary case
so hold on a second, they push you to sign up and damn near make it impossible not to have a Microsoft account associated with your machine when you set it up, but they can also lock you out of it by closing your account? and they don't have to tell you why and they don't have to help you get into your computer that they pushed you to add to the account in the first place? and people are okay with a company like Microsoft? Because it used to be people would put that garbage software down and Microsoft would learn who they don't mess with. Thank you for writing this, btw. I'm about to go find out the best Linux distro for a Lenovo Thinkpad.
Try Linux Mint – I have also one (Dell) notebook with Mint.