for every one you strike down two more takes it place :/ stop fucking blaming the victim
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3 months of back and forth with MS after XBL account hack and lose everything
- Thread starter dallow_bg
- Start date
for every one you strike down two more takes it place :/ stop fucking blaming the victim
Hahahaohwow.gif
Unless you're Geoff or a celebrity: Stepto hears you, Stepto doesn't care.
Read his "interview"/PR spin on GiantBomb to see him and his team really don't care about this.
RedNumberFive
Banned
Yup. I'm not sure why they even posted that interview considering he either dodged every question or gave non-answers. He provided absolutely no information about what MS is doing about the situation.
I am not blaming the victim! I just showing that there is another side to the story and the possible reason why sometimes you hear this horror stories. Read my post and you will see.
D
Deleted member 752119
Unconfirmed Member
I have no media connections, I was just encourage by friends on CAG to blog it and and sent it on to sites like Kotaku, Joystiq, The Consumerist etc. I did that, and CAGs acted on my blog and forwarded stuff on to media people and twitter feeds etc.
So if anyone is having problems with MS (or any other company) and are getting terrible treatment, I encourage doing the same.
I was skeptical it would lead to anything, but it really showed the power of forums and the blogosphere.
Nothing off. Just ended up being a fluke set of circumstances where the banning had nothing do with this case of a Russian hacker stealing my profile. It had to do with another hacker some how ending up with my old 360 that had got the RROD in Jan. 2011 which I dropped off at Best Buy CS for recycling.
Somehow that didn't get recycled, but rather someone took it and fixed it and used it to try to hack accounts, including some high profile MS employee accounts. Again this was dropped of for recycling with their electronics recycling program, not turned in for a warranty exchange etc.
The HDD was wiped by me (and I don't think I even took the HDD to Best Buy as I had a friend who I thought may have wanted it). But the XBLPET ID'd that console by the serial number/console ID, saw my gamertag was the most frequently logged into one on that console, and inferred that I was the one doing the hacking.
When this media storm got stirred up yesterday they looked at it more thoroughly finally, and checked the log in dates. They saw that my gamertag had not been logged into on that console since January 2011 (when I got the RROD) and the hackings occurred way after that.
So that's the mistake they made, and the change their making to their investigations process (checking log in dates) that the MS rep mentioned in the Kotaku article about my case.
So it really was just a fluke, as that banning happened through a crazy set of circumstance, and the ban for it just happened to come down during the middle of the investigation of my profile being hacked and migrated to Russia.
The 3+ month delay had nothing to do with that banning though. That was all on the investigations team. I had to file the BBB complaint and get a call from a rep at MS Corporate office to get that moving forward, and when the rep called me he noted that the case hadn't been touched in "quite a while" and apologized for that.
So to any who are still waiting after months to get a hacked account back. File the BBB complaint if you haven't. If that doesn't work, blog it and e-mail it around like I did. Don't let MS just screw you over.
Oh for sure. I won't be paying for Live or buying things on the Marketplace anymore. I mean I appreciate that they took care of the situation, and especially that they're sending me a new console.
But I'm still soured on the experience, and still worried about account security since hackings are STILL occuring. I had a unique password on my WLID that was decent strength (7 random letters with one cap, and two random numbers at the end). It could be stronger, and I do have a longer one now with symbols added in and more caps.
Only mistakes I could see are 1) I used that e-mail address on a lot of forums. So someone could have definitely gotten the Windows Live ID, and maybe brute forced the password somehow. 2) I had the real answer to my secret question, so it's possible that answer could have been socially engineered.
Those are things I'll change, as I'll put my Live and PSN accounts on separate e-mails that I don't use for anything but those accounts, and my secret questions now have nonsense answers so they can't be socially engineered.
But, again, I'm still soured on the experience so I'll only use the Xbox for exclusives or the odd game like Skyrim that runs better than on the PS3. I'll have no need to pay for Live for a few years as I had a 12 month code I bought right before I got hacked, and have/will get close to 3 years in free codes from MS for this ordeal.
pyrealnova
Member
I know how he feels. My account was hacked back in October and I still don't have access. The big fuck up was that MS actually restored my account, but sent the confirmation/recovery email to the WRONG email address. I was told it wouldn't be a huge problem for them to correct, but it has been 2 months now and I still have yet to receive an email with recovery instructions. I've called numerous times, and each time they tell me I just have to wait. One time I got a very friendly and helpful customer service rep who read me the instructions over the phone. I was elated and thought I was finally about to get my account back. Unfortunately one step involved entering a dummy Windows Live ID (provided by MS) that emails you a recovery password. Naturally the ONLY address I could select from the drop down menu was the incorrect one that caused this mess in the first place.
Now I'm just waiting...i guess. I'm about to give up and simply start over fresh with a new gamertag.
Now I'm just waiting...i guess. I'm about to give up and simply start over fresh with a new gamertag.
I'm sorry, but just because you weren't blaming the victim in this case, you were blaming them in general.
The fact of the matter is that a ton of people are being hacked -- a lot of well-informed people who are unlikely to be phished, at that -- and MS then goes around saying it's the user's fault, and you gobble it up hook, line and sinker.
It's obviously not that simple.
And then MS go and start treating these customers like shit until it starts looking bad for them.
I don't see anything going on here that should be acceptable to anyone, not even MS, yet they don't seem to be lifting a finger at anything but a glacial pace for anyone unless they have a pedestal that's gaining attention.
test_account
XP-39C²
I find it weird why it only seems to affect Xbox Live customers. With isolated cases i can understand the other side of the story, but when it happeneds to so many people in the same group, i cant imagine that their all targets of phishing etc.
Much of Microsoft's software doesnt exactly have a good track record of being exploit free. They have definitely gotten better over the last years, but still.
See, that could explain the long wait of three months, but the banning outcome is the real issue here.
As the guy who is the Director of Policy and Enforcement on Xbox LIVE, I don't really see how account security is even his deal.
Because he's a rather publicly facing professional, I guess everyone thinks he can do stuff.
RedNumberFive
Banned
If it's not his responsibility, then why does Microsoft make him the face of these security issues?
Because he has at least some involvement in customer interaction, unlike the only other public facing professional, Larry Hryb.
He didn't get involved in any of this until users started tweeting at him for help.
If you look at his history, the most public interaction he had with regard to his profession is to inform customers that there is a ban-wave, or that they can detect burnt pre-release games.
He didn't do this whole Account Security thing until people started tweeting to him.
It's terrible that this would happen and XBox Live would take such a staunch stance on his account.
Clearly he's not in Russia, looking into his IP and hardware information should prove that - I feel they just may not want to put the time and effort into giving him back his account.
I've followed this fellow since he posted about this on the XBox Forums themselves, and I thought for sure Microsoft would give him his account back permanently.
Hopefully Stepto and some of the finer people at Microsoft can step in and help this guy out.
Clearly he's not in Russia, looking into his IP and hardware information should prove that - I feel they just may not want to put the time and effort into giving him back his account.
I've followed this fellow since he posted about this on the XBox Forums themselves, and I thought for sure Microsoft would give him his account back permanently.
Hopefully Stepto and some of the finer people at Microsoft can step in and help this guy out.
RedNumberFive
Banned
As soon as Giant Bomb posted their story he was the one Microsoft sent out as their representative on this issue. Whether or not it's his day-to-day responsibility is irrelevant. If he's not the go to guy, then they need to find someone who is. Hopefully someone who isn't as disingenuous as Stepto.
Honestly I agree, I don't think Stepto is the right person for this kind of contact. Obviously Microsoft thinks he is, or (as you pointed out) he would not have been in contact with GiantBomb, at least in any professional capacity.
I would argue that a representative who represents Windows Live ID as a whole would be a better choice for this. But I suppose Larry and Stephen are just a tad more 'PR' appropriate.
This is par for the course with Microsoft's customer service.
I had a semi-similar situation happen last year. Well, late 2010 into mid last year. In mid 2010 I was kind of broke, I had two of my three roommates lose their jobs in the same month. Now, we had a nice place where the rent four a four bedroom apartment was 780 a month and we split that 4 ways. Came to 195 plus utilities each, cheap living and it was a nice place, life was good. Well, as I said, two roommates lost their jobs at once. Took them 3 months to find a new one and due to them having no savings, we would have lost our apartment if someone didn't pay it. I agreed to cover them until they found a job as long as I could, I'd known both for a long time and both were reliable. (Neither here nor there but both did pay me back in full when they found a job) Things were tight but I managed but it left me with almost no extra money when my Live ran up, couldn't afford to go drop 50 on a new card. I did manage to do 7.99 for a month so I agreed to do month to month for that moment. After two months of that, my roommates found jobs, I went back to having disposable income and all was well. I went out and bought a Live card at the store.
About the same time my bank got bought out (National City bought by PNC) and I got a new debit card. Thus, the one on file was no longer valid. No biggie, I figured I'd update when I needed to buy something. Since I bought a 1 year card at the store I just added that to the account. I thought my renewal date was a few days later than it was apparently because my card was attempted to be charged. The card was dead though so no way for me to realize the issue and since there was no interruption to my service, I never realized. I put my one year card on and that was that. Until 3 months later.
One day my 360 just wouldn't connect to Live. I called Microsoft and they advised me of a payment that hadn't gone through for one month of Live. I asked if they could just take the one month off the one year subscription they could see I had added. They said they could not. I said that okay, I'd just pay the 7.99 with my new card. They said I could do so through Xbox.com only at this point because it had been over 2 months. Well, I had never used the web site, never had any need to. I was told that I could get in with the Windows Live ID associated with my account. I was even given that ID. Tried to log in with it and no luck. I figured I had just forgotten my password and so I went through the ridiculous process to recover a Windows Live ID password. Finally a Windows Live specialist gets back with me and tells me the problem isn't that I don't know the password, the problem is this Windows Live ID does not exist. Somehow a nonexistent Windows Live ID had gotten tied to my gamer tag. Not sure how to this day and Microsoft would never give me a reason. But regardless, I call Microsoft back and tell them I can't get in. They basically tell me I'm out of luck.
The next day I get the E74 error on my 360. No way to recover the Gamertag now even if I could and the next week I'm set to move out of state and thus disposable income is again a bit limited, can't afford to go buy a new 360. It took me about 5 months to purchase another one but at that point I am able to buy a slim one and I use the cable to move everything from my old hard drive to my new system. At this point I again call Microsoft to try to get this resolved. I'm consistently told that without the Windows Live ID I will have no luck. I again tell them repeatedly that according to Windows Live's specialists it does not exist. They tell me basically that I am out of luck. I had been a customer for over 5 years of Live and I'm basically being told sorry but there's nothing we can do. I can still use my Gamertag but not play online. I ask if at least there's a way to transfer my licenses to my new system for all my purchased content and am told that is possible. Can't do it on Xbox.com obviously because can't access it but they'll do it manually and will call me when its done. I'm told to start a new gamertag. I also ask about the 9 months I still had on my 1 year subscription and they tell me they may be able to get me something for that. They'll call me back.
2 weeks pass and no one calls. I call back. They'll resubmit both request. Another week passes and no one calls. I call back and am told its being escalated. At this time I contacted a few of my old media contacts (used to work in the industry) to see if anyone knows someone I can contact higher up. I finally get an email address for someone I'm told is very high up the chain of command and I contact them. I make it clear that I do know people in high places, provide some of the sites I've written for and provide proof of who I am. Two days later I get an email from them back telling me that they'll take care of the whole thing, fully restore my gamer tag, remove the charge and get me back a full year of Live. Upon pointing out that I'd spent over 20 hours on the phone trying to deal with this they even agreed to throw in some Microsoft Points. At this point I've been playing since I got my new 360 on a new gamer tag though and all my saves are tied to the new one. They agreed to transfer my one year of Live to the new gamer tag.
All ended decently, I did get my original gamer tag back, though I had moved on to a new one at that point and short of restarting the games I was now playing I had no way to really go back to it. At least I was able to get all my games I've bought over the years and if I ever need a new console I'll be able to have them still. But I'm left with a very poor taste in my mouth from having to escalate to that level to get anyone willing to assist.
In short, Microsoft's customer support is worthless.
I had a semi-similar situation happen last year. Well, late 2010 into mid last year. In mid 2010 I was kind of broke, I had two of my three roommates lose their jobs in the same month. Now, we had a nice place where the rent four a four bedroom apartment was 780 a month and we split that 4 ways. Came to 195 plus utilities each, cheap living and it was a nice place, life was good. Well, as I said, two roommates lost their jobs at once. Took them 3 months to find a new one and due to them having no savings, we would have lost our apartment if someone didn't pay it. I agreed to cover them until they found a job as long as I could, I'd known both for a long time and both were reliable. (Neither here nor there but both did pay me back in full when they found a job) Things were tight but I managed but it left me with almost no extra money when my Live ran up, couldn't afford to go drop 50 on a new card. I did manage to do 7.99 for a month so I agreed to do month to month for that moment. After two months of that, my roommates found jobs, I went back to having disposable income and all was well. I went out and bought a Live card at the store.
About the same time my bank got bought out (National City bought by PNC) and I got a new debit card. Thus, the one on file was no longer valid. No biggie, I figured I'd update when I needed to buy something. Since I bought a 1 year card at the store I just added that to the account. I thought my renewal date was a few days later than it was apparently because my card was attempted to be charged. The card was dead though so no way for me to realize the issue and since there was no interruption to my service, I never realized. I put my one year card on and that was that. Until 3 months later.
One day my 360 just wouldn't connect to Live. I called Microsoft and they advised me of a payment that hadn't gone through for one month of Live. I asked if they could just take the one month off the one year subscription they could see I had added. They said they could not. I said that okay, I'd just pay the 7.99 with my new card. They said I could do so through Xbox.com only at this point because it had been over 2 months. Well, I had never used the web site, never had any need to. I was told that I could get in with the Windows Live ID associated with my account. I was even given that ID. Tried to log in with it and no luck. I figured I had just forgotten my password and so I went through the ridiculous process to recover a Windows Live ID password. Finally a Windows Live specialist gets back with me and tells me the problem isn't that I don't know the password, the problem is this Windows Live ID does not exist. Somehow a nonexistent Windows Live ID had gotten tied to my gamer tag. Not sure how to this day and Microsoft would never give me a reason. But regardless, I call Microsoft back and tell them I can't get in. They basically tell me I'm out of luck.
The next day I get the E74 error on my 360. No way to recover the Gamertag now even if I could and the next week I'm set to move out of state and thus disposable income is again a bit limited, can't afford to go buy a new 360. It took me about 5 months to purchase another one but at that point I am able to buy a slim one and I use the cable to move everything from my old hard drive to my new system. At this point I again call Microsoft to try to get this resolved. I'm consistently told that without the Windows Live ID I will have no luck. I again tell them repeatedly that according to Windows Live's specialists it does not exist. They tell me basically that I am out of luck. I had been a customer for over 5 years of Live and I'm basically being told sorry but there's nothing we can do. I can still use my Gamertag but not play online. I ask if at least there's a way to transfer my licenses to my new system for all my purchased content and am told that is possible. Can't do it on Xbox.com obviously because can't access it but they'll do it manually and will call me when its done. I'm told to start a new gamertag. I also ask about the 9 months I still had on my 1 year subscription and they tell me they may be able to get me something for that. They'll call me back.
2 weeks pass and no one calls. I call back. They'll resubmit both request. Another week passes and no one calls. I call back and am told its being escalated. At this time I contacted a few of my old media contacts (used to work in the industry) to see if anyone knows someone I can contact higher up. I finally get an email address for someone I'm told is very high up the chain of command and I contact them. I make it clear that I do know people in high places, provide some of the sites I've written for and provide proof of who I am. Two days later I get an email from them back telling me that they'll take care of the whole thing, fully restore my gamer tag, remove the charge and get me back a full year of Live. Upon pointing out that I'd spent over 20 hours on the phone trying to deal with this they even agreed to throw in some Microsoft Points. At this point I've been playing since I got my new 360 on a new gamer tag though and all my saves are tied to the new one. They agreed to transfer my one year of Live to the new gamer tag.
All ended decently, I did get my original gamer tag back, though I had moved on to a new one at that point and short of restarting the games I was now playing I had no way to really go back to it. At least I was able to get all my games I've bought over the years and if I ever need a new console I'll be able to have them still. But I'm left with a very poor taste in my mouth from having to escalate to that level to get anyone willing to assist.
In short, Microsoft's customer support is worthless.
RedNumberFive
Banned
FYI, when a MS rep says they'll "call you back", that's code for "we'll NEVER call you back".
Phat Michael
Banned
very similar to my sitn. i cant EVER log onto xbox.com for the same reason as you. Also, you would think MS would WANT to help serve the customers and clients. Why they have that "remove your CC" section gone from the AUS server is just beyond me.
How is it that on my own account, i cant NOT use my credit card? why are they forcing me to use it? how is this even legal? And i still cant believe they said because i have a credit card set up to auto pay, that if i use a 12 month gold card id STILL be charged! isnt that just flat out stealing?
is there any other practice like this anywhere else in the world where i cant cancel my CC because they simply wont let me?
CitizenCope
Member
Man hearing these stories tells me I have been very lucky. Sadly I've had 5 issues where I had to contact MS support. 4 by phone call and one by chat. All went extremely well.
Phat Michael
Banned
Just an update on my situation. I emailed MS again and included all the information just asking them to please remove my CC details so i can go on points. The basic response i got was below:
So Basically, They are telling me they would rather have me cancel my XBL subscription then remove my CC details...i dont know where to begin with this. Oh and if i leave, they will charge me (Y)
So Basically, They are telling me they would rather have me cancel my XBL subscription then remove my CC details...i dont know where to begin with this. Oh and if i leave, they will charge me (Y)
VibratingDonkey
Member
What the fuck is a cancellation fee?
Well, no. But they certainly feel that the odds are that you (and people in your position) will choose to stay with Live if given this ultimatum. They're probably right.
I just removed the CC details when my Live subscription ended. It worked even on the website. I had already disabled auto-renew, however.
My account was hacked back in August. I woke up to three emails confirming my two purchases of 4,000 and 6,000 points, and switching my region to Brazil. Obviously I didn't do any of that stuff so I immediately called Microsoft and they locked my account. After calling every week for a couple months I gave up and made a new account to use until my situation gets straightened out. A couple days ago I received an email saying my account was fixed and they sent instructions on how to recover it. They also gave me 7 months of gold and 800 points for the inconvenience. I can't believe it took them 6 months to fix it.
Wolfe
Member
Do I have to call to do this? Cause I can't see anywhere on the website and it won't let me remove my CC info until I do (tells me I can't remove it since it's associated with auto renew discount rate).
Phat Michael
Banned
Ur missing the point. That option has been removed on the australian server. For me to cancel I have to call. I tried this but I waited for 30 mins on hold at international rates. It cant be done via the website. I cant disable auto renew and thats the point...
After all the shit people threw at Sony, i really hope the media does the same to MS so they can finally come out with a solid plan for this. Whether it's EA or MS, someone really should take responsibility on this, especially if it's still going on.
That's really shitty. In the US, removing CC info is a snap, or at least it was for me. =/
That's really shitty. In the US, removing CC info is a snap, or at least it was for me. =/
Phat Michael
Banned
Another update. I tweeted to @xboxsupport about my issue and how the only option i was given was to cancel my XBL subscription.
this is their response:
I cant believe how fucking stupid these idiots are. i dont know if they are intentionally being patronising or if they are just this stupid.
this is their response:
I cant believe how fucking stupid these idiots are. i dont know if they are intentionally being patronising or if they are just this stupid.
I'm not missing the point. Microsoft is a miserable company and they deliberately make this procedure as difficult as they legally can.
I couldn't change auto-renew on the site either. I'm American so I had to first change my location to Illinois before auto-renew could be disabled. Perhaps there's a similar workaround for Australians.
Only if you do not already have an ongoing Gold subscription. If you do, it's impossible without a phone call. Another option is to disable auto-renew and then remove the CC on the site once your subscription expires.
It's nuts, Microsoft spent all this extra time and money on programming their site so that it fucks you over as much as possible based on your region.