Earlier this week, my Xbox Live account was hacked. My Microsoft points balance of about 1600 was all but emptied and an attempted purchase of a further 6000 points only failed as the credit card linked to my account had expired. According to my purchase history 'I' had purchased three items of FIFA 12 'Ultimate Team' DLC (I hadn't). According to my Windows Live account, I'd added another email to my account (nope) and changed my security to one in Chinese (hmm, no).
I'd had a hard, tense day at work and really wanted to unwind by shooting some terrorists in the face (MW2) followed by an early night. As it was, my evening was completely free of face-shooting and I was up until gone midnight deleting stuff and wandering around the internet changing other passwords and generally upping my security levels. Not what I'd wanted to do at all.
I'd been aware of a hacking problem on Live, particularly in relation to FIFA DLC - one of my friends list had had an identical hack before Christmas and you don't have to search far on the internet to find similar stories. Indeed, the verb 'to be FIFA'd' has started being used ("I have been well and truly FIFA'd").
I'd never succumbed to a phish for my log in details and my password was judged 'strong' but a fat lot of good that did. The Internets say that there's a weak link in Microsoft's security software and that may be the case (I'm no expert). There's clearly something wrong given the number of incidences of hackage reported on the Internet.
I reported it to Microsoft, who said that my Live account would be locked and the details passed to its 'investigation team' and that this was likely to take up to 3 days. 12 hours later, I received an email from the investigations team, which said that they had verified that unauthorised access had taken place and then gave me a code for Microsoft points slightly in excess of those that I had lost. All I need now is for my account to be unlocked and I'll be back in the game (this hiatus may do something to remedy my FIFA addiction - 80+ hours to date).
Given how quickly my claim was agreed, coupled to the fact that early reports of this problem last autumn stated that accounts were being locked for up to a month, has led me to think that Microsoft know what's causing the issue and don't want to fix it. The 360 is coming to the end of its lifespan, with its successor expected to be announced, in some quarters, at this year's E3. Who knows what shape Live will take in the next generation of Xbox consoles? Do Microsoft consider it cheaper to pay off those unlucky games like me who've been hacked, compared with the cost of altering deep-grained issues within Live's code, when Live for the Xbox 720 (this almost definitely won't be its name) may be far different?
