Microsoft 365 Encrypted Messaging

[Ben]

What a piece of crap, man.

I needed copies of some escrow papers for taxes and asked my escrow company for them. They usually just send them in plain old email, but this morning they did so using MS365 encrypted messaging.

The instructions (from MS, not the escrow company) said to download the file, double click it, and use my email addy as the passcode. When I did that, I got a, "this is not a Microsoft account - would you like to create one?" Hell no I don't.

So then there was another option listed for a one time passcode. I did that and got an email with a numerical passcode. Copied and pasted. "Invalid code". Did it again. "Invalid code - too many attempts." Then I downloaded it again, asked for the one-time code, and this time just typed it in. Finally got in.

IMO, what a piece of crap system to use when working with people who might not be on MS365 or have MS accounts.

[Hawkmoon]

My accountant does that. I hate it.

[K Frame]

"Copied and pasted."

That was your problem. You likely picked up invisible machine characters that it tried reading as part of the password.

If you do the C&P, use the "paste as plain text" (right click to select it off the menu) option. That will strip out the machine characters.

[Ben]

"Copied and pasted."

That was your problem. You likely picked up invisible machine characters that it tried reading as part of the password.

If you do the C&P, use the "paste as plain text" (right click to select it off the menu) option. That will strip out the machine characters.

I figured that's what happened, which is why I went to manual, but I do that all the time with passcodes for lots of other programs with no problems. I'll keep the "plain text" thing in my brain for future reference though. :)

I still think it's clunky though, at least if you don't have an MS account.

[K Frame]

"but I do that all the time with passcodes for lots of other programs with no problems."

Every site/system uses different protocols for stuff like that. In some the machine characters are ignored, in others they're stripped when the PW is either pasted or submitted.

Actually making people type out the code manually isn't such a bad idea, really. It's a bit of inherent antibot verification.