RECOVERING OLD HOTMAIL.COM PASSWORD, AFTER A PASSWORD RESET.
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I have been recently forced to reset my E-mail password at hotmail,
after spending quite some time trying to recall it.

My question is:

After resetting my Hotmail password (using the reset option, from the
Forgot my password link, by answering my secret question), how can I
know what was my old password?
(The old password that I have overwritten when I've reseted my
password)

Thank You In Advance.

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is, "You can't". Having had
similar problems with web based email accounts in the past, I have
discovered that once the password is changed, it is gone. Noone can
(or will) retrieve it.

Why would you want the old one, after you've reset it?

I'm just interested to know what it was, i guess. ;)

Dear maai-ga,
My answer can not be "you can't) because the question was a "How"
question and not a "can I..." question - you can't will just not
suffice. ;)

millenium,

This is why no one has posted an official "Answer" for your Question.
As there is no way to find out what your old password was (unless you
wrote it down somewhere), no Researcher is going to post an Answer
that would either be incorrect, or fail to answer your question.

Regards,

aceresearcher

If I was feeling really cheeky, I could post this as an answer, as it
technically answers the question of "how"...

First, you need to determine if the old password is actually stored
somewhere on the Hotmail system. There are numerous reasons why it
could still be stored, from backups of the user database to a
journaled file system, to a transaction log of the database being
kept. This could be accomplished by finding the person in charge of
the Hotmail database at Microsoft and taking him or her to lunch. I
don't think that this basic information about how they maintain their
database would be considered proprietary information, so I'm sure you
could get it out of them after a few drinks.

If it turns out that the password is stored somewhere, you may be able
to retrieve it by just bringing this person a six-pack, and asking. If
you show that you're the current owner of the account, I don't think
they'd have a problem with giving you the information if it's readily
accessible.

If it isn't regularly accessible, you might have to use other
techniques to recover it, most of which are probably illegal. For that
reason, I won't go into them here. Use your imagination. ;)

If it turns out that the data is not saved in some form by the system,
it may still be technically possible to retrieve it. Magnetic hard
drives work by polarizing tiny portions of a metallized surface. When
a hard drive overwrites data, it is possible to determine what data
used to be stored at that location, by examining the strength of the
polarization. For example, call the two polarizations used to store a
bit "positive" and "negative", and say that the current data written
at that location is "positive". If the last past bit stored at that
location was also positive, the strength of the polarization will be
slightly stronger than the average positive bit. If the last bit was
negative, the polarization will be slightly less positive than the
average positive bit.

Again, the methods that might be used in recovering said hard drive
and actually performing the analysis are beyond the scope of this
document.

So there. ;)

There is a transaction log which keeps all the record of the passwords
used and the old passwords too. This log also keeps information of all
the wrong passwords also entered by the user. If you can get your
hands on this log file for your particular username you can get the
inofrmation you are looking for.