How To Find A Hidden Email Password

How to find out an email password which is hidden by ‘blobs’ or asterisks. If you use email you will initially have set up a username (which may be all or part of your email address) and an email password which stops anyone else being able to access your email. You will need to know your email password if you ever want to set up your email again.

E.g. if you reinstall Windows or want to set up your email on another computer. By looking in the account details of your current email application (Outlook Express, Windows Mail etc) you will be able to see all the settings you need to copy except the password – this will be hidden by asterisks (or ‘blobbed out’ so you can’t see it).

Email Password Recovery – The following programs are from Nirsoft.net – a popular software utility site rated by Web Of Trust (see Safer Browsing with WOT) as very safe and we would happily use them ourselves. However, due to their very nature (as these programs reveal hidden email passwords) some antivirus software may flag them as a security risk or even quarantine them.

If your antivirus software does this you could switch it off temporarily and try again – if you do not want to, you must find another way to discover your password (e.g. contact your email provider for help) as all such password recovery programs will likely be flagged up by your antivirus.

Option 1: If you download email using a program like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail: download Mail PassView in a zip file – the link is about three quarters of the way down the page and a full list of all the email programs supported is near the top of the page. Skip to the next step (Running The Program).

Option 2: If you use a messenger application like MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger to access your email: download MessenPass in a zip file – the link is about three quarters of the way down the page and a full list of all the messenger programs supported is near the top of the page.

Running The Program

First, unzip the program file to create the folder MailPV (option 1) or MSPass (option 2). Go into the folder and double click the program Mailpv.exe or Mspass.exe to run it. Both programs, when run, will open up to display the username(s) and password(s) of any email accounts that they find in your user account.

If you want to save the information into a text file to print out, select (highlight) all of the entries listed and then click the Save button in the top left corner of the program (looks like a floppy disk). Give your file a name and it will be saved into the same folder as the program.

Conclusion

Both programs offer a quick way to find a hidden email password without having to spend time on the phone calling your email provider for support.