My outlook.com account was hacked again recently.  Spammers hijacked my account and basically sent spam to everyone I have ever sent an email to.  This attack did not change my password.  This happened earlier on this year, where the spammers sent an email to everyone on my contacts list.  I deleted my contacts to try and prevent this from happening but it looks like this makes no difference.  I have changed my password several times.  My computer has antivirus and my strong password is so long now I don't believe it can be cracked, and this is more like a cookie hijack.  However whenever I read blogs about what to do when you are hacked, it implies it's my fault and that I should just change my password and not leave my account logged in in a public place (which I never do!).

It seems like they can do it whenever they like.  I am thinking about closing my outlook.com account as I do not believe it is secure and I do not believe Microsoft make enough effort to publicise well-known vulnerabilities or ways to avoid them.

How do I prevent this from happening?  How do I make my outlook.com (previously hotmail) email secure?  Can I switch on some method where I have to approve any outgoing email or something like that?

I have been a hotmail user for many years but this has made me really unhappy.  It's an unpleasant feeling a bit like being burgled.  I have had to apologise to everyone I spammed and I have no way of knowing if anyone I spammed was caught out by one of these spams.

Can you offer any advice (apart from the generic http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/outlook/hacked-account) ?