Microsoft wants to be the provider of all of your cloud services, from webmail (Outlook) to storage (SkyDrive), aiming for the same market as cloud services from competitors like Google and Apple. The new product has a lot of fans, including Josh. Well, Josh was a big fan until Microsoft abruptly locked him out of his account and won’t tell him why.

He isn’t just locked out of his e-mail account and work files. It’s even worse: he’s locked out of his Windows Live games account. Nooooooooo!

He writes:

3 weeks ago I suddenly got an error message that my skydrive couldn’t sync my folders, upon further research I found out that my Microsoft account was “temporarily blocked” (to this day that’s what it says when I try and logon) it said it may have to do with getting hacked so I changed my password, that didn’t work.

I tried emailing, posting on their forums and calling them which only led me to being transfered to a line that said the wait was over one hour and to leave a call back number which then disconnected me before I could leave it.

I tried calling every day and waiting on hold and got nowhere, finally I tried their twitter account, after days of DMing back and forth they told me to create a new account and fill out a form they linked me to so I did, this was their reply 3 days after I filled it out.

“I’m happy to assist you with your concern that you could not access your email account.

Please be informed that we have reviewed your account and determined that it was closed due to violation of our Terms of Use.

We are not able to discuss the specific details of your account closure. To read Microsoft Services Agreement and learn about the code of conduct, please visit: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/code-of-conduct”

That’s it, they won’t tell me why.

I tried asking so and they have yet to reply.

I have my account and documents linked between my home and work, if that wasn’t bad enough tonight I try to play Dark Souls and it doesn’t work because my games for windows live account is attached to the cd-key and won’t let me login…

So not only have I lost my skydrive account, my email, my contacts and settings sync’d across multiple machines but now I’ve lost games I’ve legitimately paid for.

I tried to change the MS account tied to my live ID but it won’t let me because I have to verify my old account which doesn’t work.

I went from praising their products and looking forward to buying a Windows phone when my contract was up to losing all my data and purchased content..

The only thing I can figure based on others complaining of losing their accounts online is that they scanned and saw some not work safe images I had in my pictures folder (which isn’t publicly shared), there can’t be more than a few dozen .gif and .jpg images, mostly funny stuff I saved from 4chan and shacknews.

I’m not sure if there is anything that can be done but I am livid and want to get my account back if not at least the games I paid for.

The fact my account was completely terminated without any warning is completely asinine..

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes online most likely has something offensive in their accounts or hard drive, whether it came from a spam message, a clueless relative, or your own personal file of funny pictures. Silly us, assuming that our private files are private.

A reader who encountered a remarkably similar situation with Google took to Twitter, and his issue was resolved only because a Google exec happened to see his campaign.

Microsoft lost to Apple last week in the first round of our Worst Company in America tournament, but they probably had Josh’s vote.

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