I once had my account 'hijacked' by someone that got their hands on my password.. After a polite email to Hotmail Admin they asked me to confirm some of the recent activity on my account, e.g. Emails sent and received, any contacts in the address book and any information I could give that was included at sign-up. Once they were happy I had my account back online (they also kindly restored all the emails that said hijacker had deleted!). Whole thing took less than 4 days. Just be nice and they usually accomodate.