Xbox Live phished/hacked/somethinged

[MisterBubbles]

Can i have the title changed back please, all you naysayers.

[Sketcz]

Good luck to her, she has done more in a week than the gaming press has done in months, bravo.

Has this been going on for that long?

Doesn't surprise me - the printed games press is run by a bunch of corrupt, spineless, cock-sucking cretins suffering from fragile egos and behaving like maniacal despots. Golden rule: never question the golden teats of anyone who provides advertising, free flights to conventions, or free games. And I don't even mean review copies - every time a new game is released publishers send free thank you copies to staff they favour. I know because I was there.

You will never, ever see a respectable games magazine until they can survive both without ads and pre-release exclusives.

[fuse]

The key difference between this and Sony is still that Sony had data taken from them directly, Microsoft have not. Microsoft have been quite short-sighted in allowing a route for hackers to launder money through stolen accounts (FIFA 'ultimate team'), which IMO they have not considered the risks of, but now it seems people are even buying stolen accounts just for free games... and if that's quite worrying to say the least. If you're doing that, why not just pirate the damn things?

Does the ultimate team thing exist on PSN too?

[MisterBubbles]

And the key difference to date is, out of the hacks, the Sony hack has resulted in zilch nada zero 0 been stolen from anybody , but M$ has had and allowed lots of cash to get robbed, and i don't see this on front pages of papers and the 1 o'clock news, M$ are trying to hush it up and say its no big thing, and bribe journalists from reporting it, cause they know this could ruin Live.

[C']

FIFA Ultimate Team is available on the 360, PS3 and PC versions of the game.

I'm glad this woman got her account sorted quickly but (as she alluded to herself) it's not right that the only way Microsoft seem to deal with this in a quick and efficient manner is when people kick up a fuss via social media (or if you're a member of the gaming "press") whilst everyone else has to wait weeks (or longer) to get their case resolved.

Good on her for continuing to keep things going for everyone else who was not as lucky as herself.

[Matt]

It is a big mistake to say this is just related to the FIFA thefts. That is but one way of "laundering". Speaking from experience, I know 2 friends who were hacked, and including myself, none of us have played FIFA 12.

And while the Sony hack keeps getting dragged into the debate, there are some key differences. Primarily, no-one actually had any money stolen from the Sony hack. The other key difference is Microsoft's complete denial of any possibly culpability. Even if it's not their fault the account was compromised (and I have my doubts), it is their fault they have such a piss poor security process in place; and an even worse way of dealing with victims. The third main difference is how much **** Sony got over this, while there is no decent media coverage on the 360 issues.

So how about we leave the Vendor Allegiances behind and look at this for what it is - gamers are having their money stolen and Microsoft don't appear to be doing anything about it. Maybe they should do a Sony and take Live down for a month while they sort this **** out.

[Flabio]

Plenty of DEVS lost money over the Sony thing though because of the amount of time Sony kept the service down.

[MisterBubbles]

Matt never going to happen, i'd bet M$ know and have secret stuff on this, i read on NeoGAF that one person phoned customer services and got told it was hacking but it was complicated and that they couldn't talk about it too much.

[Spatial]

They aren't handling this very well at all, but I'll tell you what pisses me off - how difficult MS still make it to take your payment details off.

My PayPal account is stupidly tied to my current subscription, even though I used a prepaid card and didn't use Paypal to even pay for it. I'd like to take it off but apparently I can't do that through the site, nor by email. They still insist on your phoning them up for `security reasons`.

So despite the fact that I logged into my Xbox account to email you the message, and also have control over the email address which is tied to that account which you replied to, I still have to phone you up? What additional questions are they going to ask me that I couldn't already have hold of I didn't have control of both of those?

I have a real beef with them expecting me to pay money to ring them up and do something which you should be able to do just from the website.

[Matt]

Plenty of DEVS lost money over the Sony thing though because of the amount of time Sony kept the service down.

Well obviously you're not going to call MS out over this

Did the devs have money stolen from their accounts? No, they lost sales when the glut of backlogged titles were released. No, it's not good for them, but that's something else entirely and you really, really shouldn't use that as any sort of comparison.

[Matt]

Matt never going to happen, i'd bet M$ know and have secret stuff on this, i read on NeoGAF that one person phoned customer services and got told it was hacking but it was complicated and that they couldn't talk about it too much.

Well, if there is any truth to that and it turns out MS were keeping quiet, then the **** would have to hit the fan. Sony got **** for keeping quiet for 3 days.

[Matt]

They aren't handling this very well at all, but I'll tell you what pisses me off - how difficult MS still make it to take your payment details off.

My PayPal account is stupidly tied to my current subscription, even though I used a prepaid card and didn't use Paypal to even pay for it. I'd like to take it off but apparently I can't do that through the site, nor by email. They still insist on your phoning them up for `security reasons`.

So despite the fact that I logged into my Xbox account to email you the message, and also have control over the email address which is tied to that account which you replied to, I still have to phone you up? What additional questions are they going to ask me that I couldn't already have hold of I didn't have control of both of those?

I have a real beef with them expecting me to pay money to ring them up and do something which you should be able to do just from the website.

That's a strategy decision I'm sure - keep payment details on file, makes Live purchases quicker. Means less chance of a person not bothering with a quick, spur of the moment purchase.

And it is a crap policy to have.

[Sketcz]

The third main difference is how much **** Sony got over this, while there is no decent media coverage on the 360 issues.

Precisely. This is what I find so annoying. People wanted to crucify Sony when this happened, despite them shutting everything down to get a handle on it. People were claiming they were trading in their PS3 for a 360, they would never trust Sony again with their CC details, they were going to sue, and so on. As mentioned even TV news was covering the story.

Seems like a weird case of double standards: Sony are the boogeyman to be called out and have rotten tomatoes thrown at them, but can we all suck Microsoft's cock a bit more please?

Is it my imagination? I've followed several internet threads and sites, and the only people really angry about this are those that have lost money, whereas with Sony people were ready to murder just because they could play online for a while.

Sony handled the situation impeccably by comparison, compensating customers with free games despite them not having lost anything. Sure, most of us cancelled our CCs, I did, but did they actually cause us, the customer, to lose money? Not that I know of.

In contrast people are being swindled blind with this MS debacle.

['Press Start']

My Brother got hacked and he never played fifa, ever! He may have signed up to EAs origin site though through need for speed: Hot pursuit.

Either way its a disgrace but everyone is still going to play their xbox and buy games and do nothing in protest.

[fuse]

Ok, I'm not sure people understand the difference in the two situations.

Sony lost personal customer information en masse due to a security breach on THEIR systems. They had no choice but to take the system down because they needed to bring their own security systems up to speed. They offered people free games and an identity theft support service because they were the source of the breach.

Until proven otherwise, Microsoft have NOT had a breach on their systems, however people who have accounts with them have had their details stolen - not through Live itself though. If I stole your details (email, password), I can sign into your Live account, just as I could sign into your PSN account and buy points, or even your Play/Amazon/ShopTo account and use your credit card there.

The biggest faults on Microsoft's part are in allowing FIFA Ultimate team points to be transferred between accounts, and the shoddy speed at which they are getting people their accounts back. The former is likely the reason that if I did steal your details, Live would be the best place to go to quickly get money - I use your stored CC details to buy more MS points and use those along with any existing points to buy FIFA content I can then transfer to a dummy account and then sell off via eBay to a genuine person who pays me with real money. It has nothing to do with whether the hacked user has played FIFA or not, the hacker is the one who is playing/buying content in the game - he only needs your Live account & password to do this. As a fraudster, compare the speed and convenience of that versus the hassle of trying to convince Amazon etc to let you add a third party delivery address and ship you a bunch of goodies to then sell on the black market. There is triangulation fraud as another easy possibility, but I've said too much already