My Xbox Live Fraud Experience
This Sunday I had one of those moments I've heard about but never experienced: my Xbox Live account was compromised and someone had purchased a crap load of points and transferred them to someone else. Since I default to the outlook that corporations don't give a crap anymore (have they ever?) I was thinking I was screwed and was out of the money unless I contact my bank. Not the case though; turns out Micro$soft actually seemed to care and everything turned out better than expected.
On Sunday, I woke up to a series of 4 emails confirming the purchase of 10,000 points from Xbox Live Marketplace, a renewal of my Xbox Live Family account (dude actually changed my plan to include his account) and an email confirming the transfer of those points to another Xbox Live account. Now, my first thought was that I had really tied one on the night before and had just blacked out while doing some shopping on Xbox Live. Then I remembered that I didn't drink (just smoked) and, after checking the email timestamps, the purchases were made while I was sleeping. Fuck me.
Now, I'm not a stranger to the odd charge on my credit cards and know exactly what to do; call the bank and contest the charges. Because I actually use my Xbox though, and I do purchase a lot of content through Zune and Xbox both, I thought it would be a good idea to contact Microsoft and let them know about what was going on. God forbid I contest the charges and Microsoft thinks I'm the one ripping them off, right? So, I call them up and, after waiting on hold for a good 10 minutes, I get on the phone with Regina.
Regina was very pleasant and, after she confirmed I was who I said I was, she was actually pretty sympathetic and understanding as well. I honestly didn't expect actual sympathy though and was pretty taken back by it; going through the motions and patronizing wouldn't have surprised me in the least but Regina was very accommodating, knowledgeable and helpful. Regina explained that while this isn't what she would call a common issue it does happen from time to time and, to me at least, she came across as having dealt with similar issues in the past personally. This really put me at ease when dealing with her which was good because I was in fight mode, expecting to be screwed at any moment.
One key part that struck me about this whole thing was the paper trail; because the system emailed me confirmations about each transaction it was obvious who was responsible and Regina made it clear that this a good thing. I had the username of the person the points were transferred to so, apparently, it's pretty trivial for them to respond though I find the idea that the account wasn't temporary ridiculous. I don't want to underestimate the stupidity of criminals but surely the jackass who ripped me off must know the username they sent the points to would be flagged and investigated. Right?
Anyway, Regina gave me some details about what Microsoft were going to do on their side (which I'll post once the investigation is completed lest I tip someone off in the event I know the asshole) and what my expectations should be as far as resolution (pretty good since it was caught within hours of the purchases). She also made sure to make a point of contacting my bank and letting them know as well which, while I was going to do regardless, I definitely appreciated.
It should be about a week until I hear something about the investigation and, hopefully, the resolution. All told the process took only 34 minutes and left me feeling a lot better about Xbox and Microsoft as companies to, if not completely respect, not worry about screwing me given half a chance.
That said, I'm not an idiot (well, about this stuff anyway); I still contacted my bank and contested the charges so my money is back safely where it should be. The bank, as a matter of policy, invalidated my credit card and is going to send me a new one but it's a small price to pay I think. Well, that and now there's no way I'm ever going to let a service keep my credit card on file ever again.
Email
Twitter
I am going through the same exact situation. Woke up to find someone I didn’t recognize on my friends list and a family account and 10,000 MS points had been purchased through my account. My card has been canceled now and the family account has been canceled as well. Now I am playing the waiting game until I hear back from the investigation.
Wow man, this sucks, did they do anything to the person who hijacked your money?
My son has just discovered 10 debits from his bank to XBOX with 4 more pending with the bank say they are unable to stop. I had a lengthy conversation with xbox today - useless!! they say that they can see my son did not make the purchases, which I could have told them from his XBOX statements, and told me it was up to my bank. I have been told to issue XBOX with 30 day time limit to sort it and make a refund before going back to my bank to fill in a visa debit refund form. What a mess!!! People are so mean - my son is only 16 with a little saturday job I hate people who steal!!!
Just had the same ordeal due to the common Fifa 2011 game issue… apparently that game is used for this alot, after some research. I think it has to do with being able to buy good teams up to play in tournaments… or so I’ve heard. Woke up to find 2 charges totalling $125.00 on my bank account. After a couple calls to Microsoft I had a fraud investigation going to see if they can find out who it was. Quickly got the money back from the bank, credit card canceled and reissued.
There are lots of webpages/forums full of posts about EA Sports giving out XBox live accounts through some connection they have have with the XBox 360 Market Place, when hackers inquire about “lost login information”. Hard to tell if it’s some sort of made up story, but theres enough people talking about it online over the past 8-10 months, that it gives it some weight.
I wouldnt buy into the above option as much, if there was even the most remote possibility that I gave out my information, but I dont give my login info even to family or friends…. and as an IT consultant myself, I definitly dont fall for email phishing…. I havent responded to even one EA email I’ve every recieved in fact. It just sucks when your own tenacity for security is completely undermined by the companies in the middle.
This happened to me last Friday, the issue is I don’t own the console anymore. They’re asking me for the serials. I haven’t owned it since February!
I’m confident that Microsoft will refund me, just not any time soon. They said it’d be 2-3 weeks. I’ve disputed the charges with the bank, they still went through…. I guess I need to be patient!
Well I’ve totalled up around £200’s worth of payments taken out for MS points and Microsoft’s investigation has somehow managed to confirm these payments aren’t fraudulant.. Which I find to be outrageous as I don’t buy MS points anymore and haven’t done so for a couple of years. The GT they was purchased on was my old one which I haven’t used since 2009 (payments in question were processed in 2010). I can match everything up from my bank statement to my purchase history, they even bought a game on the marketplace which I bought myself on disc.. With all this proof microsoft just won’t have it. The guy I spoke to didn’t have a clue, he couldn’t understand where I was coming from, didn’t have the necessary information. Everything he told me conflicted with what two of his colleagues told me. I’m just so annoyed because when I first phoned them the guy said it looked certain the payments were fraud, yet this so called Fraud Investigation Department have other opinions.
I demanded the investigation to be re done and, after about an hour on the phone trying to persuade him to send it for investigating, he finnally agreed. If I don’t get my money back I will cancel my XBL suibscription and sell my Xbox because I don’t feel like we’re on the same page.
Thanks
James
something similar happened to me but it was not with money it was my whole account, someone was playing on my account didnt buy anything but i still havent got it back but microsoft said they will sort it out. Also they said that its something that they dont take seriously.
This is by no means uncommon… at least, not anymore.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/10/as-xbox-live-fifa-12-fraud-continues-microsofts-response-becomes-maddening.ars
Many are trying to blame social engineering, phishing, etc., but that just isn’t possible in many reported cases (including my own). There’s been a security breach somewhere, though not necessarily at Microsoft.
I agree about the surprisingly personable and helpful Xbox Live Support staff(!) Not sure if I can say the same for their investigation teams in terms of turn-around times (sounds like I’ll be waiting well over a month for a refund and reinstatement of my account, which I had already re-secured), but perhaps they’re flooded with thousands of these cases.
Great article SEO is so important nowadays especially because of increased online competition. SEO is also the best free way to get long term traffic to your website, or blog continuously traffic is the lifeblood of our online business. Without traffic our online businesses will fail. Great article, and nice blog!
Experiencing the same, I am 37 week pregnant on maternity leave so have not alot of money! Other night while my husband was drivng lorry to London on a 13hr work shift his son told me that Dad was on XBOX Live!! Checked thsi and yes it showed him playing FIFA12!!!1 freaky seenas he was driving lorry back from London. The next morning i logged in to Barclay’s onoine account to check my money situation for no reason in particular and found NINE card transations with the description Microsoft XBOX. After the night before with my husband showing online I called Microsoft immediately who informed that yes his account has been hacked and all links to FIFA12 and told me on the dl that EA Games had a problem during development of FIFA12 that has left a loop-hole making peoples XBOX Live accounts accessible throguh FIFA profile. Barclay’s and Microsoft have launched investigations as I have lost over £200 and husband has had his Paypal, Ebay, Yahoo and Mastercard hacked by same person who even had cheek to change my husbands details on Live and Ebay to say he lives in USA!!
On internet and in papers EA are saying that this has arisen from people responding to phishing emails from hackers sending them their personal details! As if! Thus is a problem globally and I encourage ANYONE who owns an XBOX 360 and FIFA12 DELETE YOUR CARD DETAILS FROM YOUR XBOX LIVE ACCOUNT OTHERWISE THIS COULD BE YOU AND ITS HORRIBLE
Just had the credit card bill for a card we no longer use but was the card used to originally set up x-box live a year ago. £600 worth of point purchases since Oct 23rd 2011.
Registered as fruad with X-Box after investigation they say that my sons IP address was used and so they won’t do anything, £600!!
My son is 14 and denies doing it, he’s never done it before except for a couple of purchases early last year that we agreed to. He’s not stupid and wouldn’t do this behind our back. There is no trace of these purchases on his X-box.
Our account history shows around £15 of purchses up to last May then nothing until Oct 23rd then up to £40 per day for over a month.
Trying to get a refund through the credit card but Microsoft do not want to know, they claim no security breach and the only scam was through phising. Likely story.
Devastated where are we we going to get £600 quid from?? Going to send this to TV Watchdog and look at legal action. Big players like Microsoft have no ethics! And it seems no responsibility!!
nice blog, but it deserve a better theme or may you can change some graphics here
Had mine hacked on Nov 15th. Charged 125 dollars on my card. Called support everything seemed fine. They locked the account sent it to investigation. Told me it would take about 3 three weeks. 2 weeks later I got an email saying they refunded the 125 dollars and I would see it in 10 business days. Two weeks later hadn’t seen anything. Wrote an email then a few days later received a 19.99 credit. Waited another week and never received the rest so I emailed them again. This time they responded saying the refunded the rest. Got a refund of 50 dollars and haven’t seen anything else.
Sent two emails and tried to get them on the phone but support claims it’s a different department and apparently they haven’t heard of a phone.
Seemed to go well at first and I wasn’t worried about it. Now it’s turned into a huge ordeal. I should have known it wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.
Just checked my credit card statement over £250 of charges for items we didn’t buy. Had this problem last year, contacted the very helpful X box staff who cancelled everything conducted an investigation and told me it was not fraudulent. Well its happened again and this ime I am really angry about it. What will X box say ? I don’t know, but unless I get my money back they will be in court. This has got to be stopped it is theft.
Does anybody know of a class action against X box or involvement of the fraud squad ?
i have been fighting microsoft after my account was mysteriously charged 125 dollars on ms points while i was asleep, after almost a month they sent me an email where they in fact confirmed it was fraud and promised a refund along with 2 months of free live gold due to the mandatory suspension while the investigation was been conducted, it’s now feb of 2012 almost half year later and have not gotten my money back!
Possibility of sons friend bringing over their xbox? That would explain the ip address.
For example you can link the xboxes to play one tv.
SAME EXACT THING JUST HAPPENED TO ME about hour ago, just got off phone with microsoft rep. omfg..
Same thing happened to me.! Fraud started in October 2011. I cancelled my credit card. Microsoft investigated, suspended my account and told me no no fraud took place and the account was safe to use. The account was reopened in late December and the fraud started again with over £250 of fraud in January alone. Microsoft again investigated and told me that no fraud had occurred. I
Well they didn’t try very hard since the starting date of the account had been changed to October 2011 (and my account and payments long pre-date this) What is interesting is that the registration date cannot be changed by the user and so the account details were changed by Microsoft or someone hacking into Microsoft, They also didn’t notice that I had apparently moved to the USA., and my birthday changed!
I have lost about £700. This is global fraud., and has been reported in the press. I am confident that my credit card company will refund my money.
It is wrong that Microsoft are allowed to continue trading when they are knowingly facilitating criminal activity..
Angus
This same thing happened to me awhile ago, and I asked Xbox why they weren’t doing anything to protect people from this happening again. Their response was “we’re sorry”. Yet I was the one who had to get a new credit card, I had to change my passwords, etc. I had to be locked out from purchasing on my own account for 6 weeks.
The thieves played on happily….......and they’ll continue to do this over and over again. And the only way to avoid this happening is to get rid of my Xbox.
What’s wrong with this picture, Microsoft? The innocent pay while the guilty play!
Same thing has happened to me caused so much trouble my son made one purchase then I get my statement £153.00 worth of charges! My son was at school when most of them were charged! I am sooooo mad! I know my son would not do this!! Xbox sent me a generic email saying its not fraud well what is it then! Just give back the money!! Robbing ******* might go to CAB