How do I get rid of these questionable entries in my Hotmail auto-complete?

I’ve heard this one a lot in recent months and I was never able to figure
out what was going on.

All of the credit for this goes to Elizabeth, one of my readers, who first asked the question; when I didn’t know the answer, she came back to me a few days later with the explanation.

We now know where they came from, and even better, how to get rid of them
and make sure that they don’t come back.

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Auto-complete

Auto-complete is pretty straightforward. When you type an email address or name into an address field as you compose a message, Hotmail automatically displays a list of addresses that are supposedly either in your address book or from people whom you’ve corresponded with before.

The idea is that you can click on the entry that you want once you see it rather than typing out the rest of the email address.

Questionable auto-complete

Sometimes, you might find auto-complete suggestions that are troubling, to say the least:

That’s from my own Hotmail account, and I have no idea how it got there.

Honest.

And I can understand how some might find that embarrassing if someone were looking over your shoulder as you’re typing.

The clue: invitations

The clue turned out to be Windows Live Messenger invitations. A little way down the left side of the screen, you’ll probably see something like this:

Have the kids leave the room before you click on that.

I had 24 friend requests and seven group invitations. Yes, the count on the Hotmail screen was wrong, so check it even if it says zero.

And sure enough, down in the group invitations:

Uh, No, thanks.

And that was one of the tamer ones. Many others had pictures.

Prevention

At the top of the Invitations list is a “Change your invitation settings” link:

Click on that.

The result is the Privacy Options page:

I’m willing to guess that your privacy settings are a little less restrictive than you might want.

You can examine the options on that page, but I simply chose to lock it down:

My friends can find me in search, view my profile, and see my status. Some friends (those that I haven’t specifically marked with limited access) can see my contact information and see new photo albums that I create, but no one can send me friend invitations.

I’ll deal with friending myself, thank you very much.

Cleaning Up

Now, about those existing invitations.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found an easy way to deal with the accumulation of invitations other than to simply go back to that Invitations list and click No, thanks on each invitation.

When you do so, Hotmail will display “You didn’t add {name} as a friend. Don’t know this person? Let us Know.” where “Let us Know” is a link to report the situation. My expectation is that if enough people click on that for a specific invite, then that account could eventually be closed.

But I don’t use Messenger!

Well … yes, you do.

If you have a Hotmail account, you have a Windows Live account. And if you have a Windows Live account, you have a Windows Live Messenger account.

Whether or not you ever use the program.

Regardless of how you got it – Hotmail, Messenger, or something else – what you really have is a Windows Live account that can be used for any of the Windows Live services that Microsoft provides.

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Thanks again to Elizabeth who I think just saved a lot of people from some very embarrassing situations.