Xbox Account Hacked
Xbox Account Hacked
Add my name to the growing list of people who have had their accounts hacked.
Going over my Visa statement this month I saw a charge for $27.99 that I did not make. I checked my purchase history on my account and there was no purchases made so I called MS to find out what the charge was for. Turns out that an account was created and a 3 month subscription for said account was purchased. When going over the details of the account it turns out that the name was mine, the address was mine, the Visa was mine, everything indicated that the account holder was actually me. The customer service agent couldn't reveal the e-mail address attached to the account, but it wasn't one of the four live id's I have on my family account. He could only confirm the e-mail address if I knew it (which of course I don't).
The agent also said it was a bit of a weird situation because there was no activity at all on the account. Usually when a card is stolen the person buys MS points over and over with the card. They don't normally just spend your money for something they don't use.
Now a weird story leading up to this. Is it related? Maybe, maybe not. Some of you know this story already.
Just before the purchase date of May 2 I was playing in a public lobby. During a 1 on 1 race I made a crossover pass on this fellow that went wide on his corner entry. He did manage to get back on the track quickly enough to make contact with my rear quarter panel. The contact was incidental, and there was no harm done. In the last corner of the last lap this guy decided that he was going to ram me instead of braking for the corner. Turns out I recovered from the incident quicker than he did, and went on to win the race.
I then started to receive voice and text messages. He proceeded to tell me that he rammed me in order to get revenge for the "dirty pass" I made at the start of the race, but it didn't work. I tried to explain that by hitting me in the back half of my car after I made the clean pass it was his own fault. He wasn't having any of it, and continued to let me know that he would be back, and he would get revenge. So finally I simply blocked communication and filed a complaint against the guy. Keep in mind that I was racing on an alternate tag.
Next day I get a message on my PTR Paparazzi tag from some random person that simply says "dick head". Checking the players profile I've never played a game against them. In fact, we don't even share one game in common. No idea who this person was, but I did file a complaint against them as well and carried on.
Two days later the charges were made.
I let the MS agent know this as well, and he seemed happy that I had filed a complaint against the two tags. This would give them something to go on to track the person doing it.
No I've never given anyone my account information. No there's no one in the house that would be able to make an account. It is absolutely possible for you to be hacked by some random without you doing something stupid like sharing information. The whole process was pretty painless, removed info from account, cancelled card, but I just wanted to remind people that this is still a very real problem. Be careful!
Yes I know I've heard the stories about not linking your CC with your account, but the ease of having one setup was worth the risk. I no longer have one set up so I'll have to go and buy the cards, or call to make orders. C'est la vie!!
One of those a-holes again...Hope he gets caught and ends up in jail!
I´ve deleted all my CC´s from my account and changed my account to prepaid about 6 months a go. And for good reason I think...
Man, that sucks... Glad to hear you caught it early, and it was only $30...
Yeah, it's really no skin off my nose. I got lucky, and lost nothing. Both MS and Visa were very easy to deal with.
I just wanted to bring the issue to light again, and remind everyone that it's still a very real problem.
Sorry that happened to you. Deleting all credit cars or debit cards from your account is a great idea, and I had the same thought last year. But I learned that if your account was originally created on an original Xbox, like before the release of the Xbox 360, there is actually no way to delete ALL forms of payment linked to your account. AT LEAST ONE must remain. So I thought I'd be smart, cancel the card, and let my Gold expire, thinking it should roll over to a Silver account automatically. NO, thats not how it works! Instead, M$ decides to "disable" the account and I cant log into Xbox Live on that account from any 360. I can still log in from any PC and play Games for Windows all day long though. The only way they will enable the account again is if I link a valid credit, debit, or paypal account and let them charge the $59.99 fee for one year. I cant even choose a one or three month membership! Its an all or nothing deal! So watch out...if you have an original account that was created long ago on an original Xbox, dont let this crap happen to you.
My secondary account, Paradox Anomaly, was created on my first 360..and can go to Silver anytime I want its Gold to expire. Stupid.
That's good to know because it's the route I took as well. I called MS again because my CC was still linked to the account. Long story short I was told that if they remove a payment method with auto-renewal they have to cancel the account.
I said ok, and left the cancelled card linked to the account. I'll have to remember to update this before my account runs out.
That was my situation when this hacking started being mentioned here. Luckily that card is now expired and there's no way in hell that I'm going to update the billing information ever again.
That doesn't surprise me, since one of the common complaints about Xbox Live when it first went public in 2002 was that you had to have a valid credit card to use it. They did not have the cards that you can buy at the store like we have today. Hard to believe that was 9 1/2 years ago. LOL!!!
i learned my lesson with this aswell....altho it was a different situation it made me realize i didnt want to link anything to my xbox account like CC or paypal...last year my ex hacked my email accounts and had a load of problems cuz it was connected to itunes and companies who couldnt reach me anymore and ended up with huge debt. So i just use those prepaid cards or buy the codes from a friend who got a store for those things.
I have an a Xbox live account from the original xbox days and I tried to delete the credit card info and it wouldn't let me. Now I know why, thanx guys. What I did though was change the info for the credit card so that it isn't valid. Even if someone did get it they couldn't use it. I now buy the points cards and just put those in. You can still do that even if your account is set up for auto renewal. Just make sure you always enter a code from a card for renewal before the account expires so MS never tries to charge your credit card.