As part of a new Passport initiative to make your Microsoft Passport account more secure, you may now see a page requesting further details from you before you can access your account. This may affect both Hotmail and non-Hotmail users.

What is Microsoft Passport?

Microsoft Passport is the authentication system (or sign-in mechanism) that is used whenever you log into a website operated by Microsoft, ninemsn, or an MSN partner. This includes websites like the Hotmail e-mail website, the ninemsn Membership site and the Microsoft Developer Tools subscription site. If you already sign in to one of these (or similar) sites, the e-mail address that you sign in with is your "Passport".

The following information outlines the pages that you may see when signing in to your Passport account. These pages requesting your information should only need to be completed once. Please complete the steps below to continue on to your Passport account.

1. If you are signing in to your Hotmail account, you will see the sign-in box shown on the right here. Please enter your Hotmail e-mail address and password, then click the Sign In button. Once you have signed in correctly, please click here to go to Step 3 (as you will not see the page in Step 2). Please note: If you are signing in to ninemsn Membership, the Microsoft Developer Tools subscription site, or any other site that is not the Hotmail site, you will not see this page. Please continue on to Step 2 below.
2. Fill in all of the required fields, including your date of birth, gender and location. If you reside in Australia, please change the Country/Region to Australia and wait a moment. The remaining fields should reload with Australian information (Australian states instead of American states and Postal code instead of ZIP code). Please click the Continue button to continue.	Click for larger image
3. Please review the MSN Service Agreement and MSN Privacy Agreement. Should you have any queries regarding these agreements, please click here to contact Microsoft Passport Support directly. Once you have read the agreements, please re-enter your e-mail address in the space provided and then click the Accept button.	Click for larger image

Once you have completed these steps, you should be able to sign in to your Passport account successfully. If you are not taken immediately to the website that you were trying to sign in to (e.g. Hotmail, ninemsn Membership), please close your web browser and open it again, then navigate to the site that you wish to go to.

Should you have any further queries regarding these new Microsoft Passport pages, please contact Microsoft Passport directly by clicking here.