I got an email notification a couple of days ago that I originally figured was a phishing scam.
It claimed an inactive OneDrive account was about to be deleted because I hadn’t used it for 2 years. This account didn’t use my regular Outlook address but my Gmail address instead. I wasn’t about to click that button because it felt like a classic phishing scam.
But something at the back of my mind reminded me that I might have created a OneDrive account at that address for some reason or another. Maybe for demonstration purposes. Maybe to share something. I wanted to check it out, but I sure wasn’t going to click on a link like that.
Instead, I opened an Incognito mode window in Chrome and went to the OneDrive site to log in with the Gmail address. It turned out there actually was an account with my Gmail address. I was even able to guess the password. If I couldn’t come up with it, I’d have needed to ask for a password reset. Assuming, I’d provided proper contact information when I set up the account.
What do you know! I legitimately did have a frozen OneDrive account. I had no idea what, if anything, I had stored in that forgotten cloud. Shame on me for creating an account and not keeping up with it.
I asked to have the account unfrozen.
Two hours later, MIcrosoft got back to me.
I headed over to that account and guess what? I had absolutely nothing stored in that particular cloud. In the words of Homer Simpson, “D’uoh!”
At least I was smart enough to follow the proper steps to avoid phishing schemes.