He lost 25 years of data to a hack: one viral post got it all back

A streamer named Joshua Khane has regained access to his Microsoft account after saying the company permanently deleted it following a hack, wiping out around 25 years of accumulated data in the process.

Khane said the account held thousands of dollars worth of digital purchases, including games such as Minecraft, along with personal files and photos of his son as a baby. He first laid out the problem on X, saying Microsoft had confirmed he was the genuine owner of the account even though it had been compromised by hackers.

According to Khane, an email that appeared to come from Microsoft stated that the account had been permanently suspended to stop further misuse and protect user data, and that files stored on OneDrive could no longer be accessed. Some game purchases, the message said, could not be recovered at all.

The post gained traction online, and Xbox Support stepped in soon after. The company apologized, saying the situation was not the experience it wanted users to have when their accounts were hacked, and told Khane it was working to restore access to his purchases.

Khane later confirmed in a follow-up video that everything had come back. ‘I’ve got all my stuff back, my games back, my Microsoft account back,’ he said, adding that his OneDrive storage, including the photos of his son, had been fully restored.

Even with his data recovered, Khane said he was troubled that it took a viral post to get Microsoft moving. He described himself as ‘a nobody’ and questioned whether users without a large online following would get the same response if the same thing happened to them.

Wikimedia Commons/by UKER