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Comment by Lukas_Skywalker | Hacker News Reader

I have added what I think they call login alias to my account. This blocks logins using the normal account username (which is my public email address), and only allows them via the alias (which is not public and just a random string). Not a single foreign login attempt since I enabled the alias.

You can enable it on account.microsoft.com > Account Info > Sign-in preferences > Add email > Add Alias and make it primary. Then click Change Sign-in Preferences, and only enable the alias.

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This sounds a lot like Steam, where the name on your profile page is a vanity string that you can change whenever you want, but the actual username in their system is an unrelated (and immutable) ID.

I hadn't thought of this use case for aliases.

I had to make my Outlook email primary again on my Microsoft account, unfortunately, because of how I use OneDrive. I send people share invitations and there are scenarios (or at least there were the last time I checked) where sending invitations from the primary account email is the only way to deliver the invite. If your external email alias is primary, they'll attempt to send an email from Outlook's servers that spoofs the alias email :/

I just tested it, and it looks as if that was fixed. It seemed to work for me.

Then, is the login alias sort of a password? In that, it is something you know.

In a way, yes. I don't count on it being private though. But it appears nowhere online, so it's not used by credential stuffers or other bots.

joe@smith.com, joe.smith@bigcompany.com

...those will get "drive by" attacks no matter what.

Interesting that they're letting you alias it back to "coolkid5674321" again...

Yep, back to passwords, but less secure ones.

I had to do this as well. My account got spammed daily in such a way I had to verify my account and change my password on every login.

With the alias I no longer have this issue.

This is what I do. The crucial thing is to only use the alias for logging in.

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