Well it's aleast a start. It troubles me as a person who has invested quite abit of money into my account and as someone who uses Xbox LIVE quite a bit not just for gaming either that such a thing could happen to my account too. Microsoft really needs to get ontop of this.

It's disingenuous to say that Microsoft took the 81.08 charge from her. That language implies that Microsoft willfully and deliberately removed the money from her account for an unexplained reason. In reality, given the proximity to prior fraudulent charges, it was most likely a lagging charge from the attacker's end. Which will also be promptly refunded to Susan now that her case has international attention.

I respect your bringing this to light, Mr. Sterling, but please use care in your writing. At this point, Microsoft obviously wants nothing more than for Susan to receive complete satisfaction.

what did they refund her with MS banana pts?

You wouldn't get this problem with Sony... :trollface:

Those three pixel lines that keep popping up in the header images keep making me think my screen is dirty

@Headshot4Rent:
After the Sony PSN fiasco you can say that with a straight face? o_O

If Microsoft really wants to clear this up they should hire a PR company like Ocean Strategy to manage things for them.

The funny thing is, this has been going on for a really long time. I have 4 friends who had their accounts hacked a few months ago. MS was just as awful in helping them back then. Of course when Sony got hacked, everyone wanted the company to fall apart, but at least Sony admitted their mistake, and people's bank accounts were not hurt. Microsoft I guess has a better PR firm, in that they just look the other way and pretend nothing is wrong and the media was happy to agree. This stuff should have been reported a long time ago.

this happened to me about 2 months ago... I posted several comments here on dtoid about it, and it seemed to be an isolated incident, until recently....

In my case, the hackers charged 4 1600 points for about $80.... it took a little over a month for them to "investigate", and I still have yet to reactivate the account, mostly due to laziness and not knowing my ms live account password.....

After this, I'm done with being a gold xbox live member and putting my cc info on xbox live.... I'll use retail purchased cards from now on..... I'm just glad my bank cut off the hackers at 4 1600 pointers, or else I woulda been in the same boat as this woman..

Good for her! I'll never understand why corporations can't just easily back up their own claims of excellent customer service instead of smothering their customers' needs in redtape and foot-dragging. It's not like they didn't have $366 laying around. Or was it out of their Rainy Day jar? God bless your sacrifice, Microsoft.

Microsoft has so much room to grow in this regard. When your starting position is "pile of shit", where else is there to go besides up?

The frustrating thing about this is that, like the whole Ocean Marketing thing, it's a case of "I'm sorry. Oh, I'm not sorry for my bad customer service. Fuck that. I'm sorry I got caught."

@Jinx 01 Ah, but that's where the beauty in it lies. Sony was forced to fix everyone's problems when that happened, because of how wide spread it was. Not so for Microsoft, which had been screwing people over for getting hacked before this whole ordeal came to light.

@Headshot4Rent:
Sooooo the Sony case is better because they screwed over SO MANY customers it got more attention? And that they let your actual credit card info get stolen and used, not just your account itself get hacked?

It really is good to hear that MS refunded the charges but it still turns my stomach that it took so much effort on the part of the victim and probably would have been held up in a CSR circle jerk to this day if not for the public shaming.

I most certainly hope they take some serious steps to get to the bottom of how this scam works in the first place and put in place preventative measures (that isn't just an addendum to their no sue clause).

I wonder if they put more effort into keeping these problems quite than they do actually solving them.

Public shaming. Its what gets Microsoft to actually get their shit straight. Reminds me of a story where Major Nelson had to intervene to help out a guy who was waiting for a couple of months to get his account fixed after getting hacked. The guy got hacked again the same day he got the account back.

@Jinx 01

Im wondering if those people in the Ars article who got their cards charged can actually prove that they even had fraudulent charges and aren't making stuff up just to be trolls. If there was a rising trend in rampant fraudulent charges, why hasn't sensationalist blogs like Kotaku blown it out of proportion?

I had a similar problem but not as much money stolen. It took the better business bureau to get involved to get my account and money back 3 months after the hack attack and no use of my primary gamer tag. M$ made song look like Heroes.

Has it been pointed out that there's no actual "hacking" going on here? These so-called hackers are just cracking people's passwords, which isn't really something Microsoft can stop.

Forgive me if this doesn't work, I've never tried to post an image here before:

Just as a note, my blog has moved to www.hackedonxbox.com and is being updated from there now and not on the tumblr listed in the article :]

Whoops, thought that would get scaled to fit the comments section. Sorry dtoid mods! I don't know how to edit or delete that. I'll just wander off now...

@The Virgin Queen - Keep up the great blog! Hope this all gets sorted.

FUCK Microsoft. Not going to detail all the experiences I've had with them right now but they seem to think customer service means kicking you in the nuts and serving you a burrito full of feces. I only used to buy Sony exclusives for my PS3 until I had a few run-ins with Live customer "service". Since then I buy the PS3 version whenever possible. Fuck MSFT.

@Aequitas: I think it'd be more accurate to say that what Microsoft wants is for Sharon to shut up about it.

Companies that have to be pushed to do the right thing for their customers are despicable.

@Jinx 01 No, not better, but using credit card info is extremely dangerous, and I don't remember any confirmed uses of credit cards from the Sony breach. Hell, read the last few paragraphs of the article you linked. The information was basically useless. Though, it could make for a time consuming ordeal, canceling your credit card and such, but anyone who had any wrong doing done to them were reimbursed, plain and simple. While people who've had their accounts hacked and used on the 360 could've very well never seen a single penny of the money used again, as well as lose their Live account, which could have hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of stuff on it.

Something similar has happened to me twice. The second time was right after purchasing an x360slim that didnt even have my card info on it yet.

Hahaha, and everyone was saying how poorly sony handled their shit, and complained how long it took sony to notify people. Its taken fucking months for microsoft to come out of their little hole, sony look like saints next to this.

However yes sonys hack affected a lot more people but really the only harm was the downtime of psn for awhile, I didn't get money stolen from me, nor did I get my account blocked. We also got a lot of entertainment out of it by the internet and not to mention free games, oh and better yet at least sony stepped up their security.

@Ellie ODaire:

Great comic, and incredibly true. I have one extremely secure password I almost never use, however, because many sites and services do not permit the required number of characters. The approach to security is very inconsistent across different services.

@Sayword

Lol ok Sony fanboy. Go troll elsewhere.

yeah... the power of the press. I saw that Microsoft folded once her situtation started getting picked up by multiple gaming sites. It's nice that she finally got some resolution, but it's just sad that it takes this kind of action for Microsoft to do what they should do in the first place.

She got pretty lucky.

"who is said to have "bent over backwards" to help her in the face of a PR shitstorm."

Ohhhhh really? And who's to blame for that? M$ is just a bunch of crook, no surprise there.

Yet the Fifa hacks have been ignored for months , yup good job microsoft

she sounds like such a stupid fangirl

I find it funny that anyone that is part of the media (like keighly) that had their account hacked had their problems fixed quickly. So I guess the only way to get your jacked account back is to either be part of the media or create a shit storm.

Please tell me Mr. Andy that you can ban JimmyX (again) for that comment. That is just uncalled for.

classy as always jimboxxx. Incredibly disrepectful to a member of this community.

BUT Why she so OVEREXEGERATING thats what i find NOT cool its not like Microsoft fault they got hacked

I guess we should ban comicretard to for saying "she got pretty lucky." then too.

The stoy's about a woman, way to jump to conclusions guys!

@jimboxxx

Hey, I am looking to start a business, and to enter the market I have identified the "blind faith douchebag that will continue to shout my company's superiority through free marketing even though I generally treat customers like shit" demographic. So jimbo, how does Mircosoft attract your purchase?

@ Its games that count not consoles BUT guess u wouldnt get that

I was also a victim of the FIFA scam, having my account hacked and charged for $75 worth of MS points. But if anything, it was my bank that had the terrible customer service. The first time I called Xbox Live about it they were fairly helpful and came off like they believed me as this particular employee had encountered the scam before. Basically, they told me what I would have to do with my bank to get the charge marked as fraud and my bank said an investigation would be launched in cooperation with Xbox Live. In the meantime, I was to fill out some forms detailing the incident for my banks fraud council or whatever, and they would send me a letter once they had reviewed, and then dropped the charge. A few weeks later I did indeed receive a letter, except this one told me that they didn't believe me, that I was a liar trying to bilk the bank out of $75 (cuz when you commit fraud, you either go big or go home), and that I would have to end up paying the $75 that had been stolen from me. I almost stormed into my bank with a paintball gun Ari Gold-style right there, but I decided to try Xbox Live one more time before doing so. After explaining this development and after they pulled up the file on this whole fiasco, they were very apologetic and explained that they would cancel the transaction on their end so I wouldn't have to deal with my greedy bank anymore on this situation. To be fair, they said they were supposed to have done that already by then, so they did screw up a little but they did make it right in the end. So yeah, that happened. The moral of the story is FUCK THE BANKS! All of them, right in the mouth.

I got hacked about two months ago. Someone bought $80 of MSP. And my xbox hadn't been hooked up to the internet for about 4 months. I called MS and they were completely useless - just took my information and said we'll get to it. My bank refunded me so I didn't give a shit.

No jimbo, what I do not get is if the same exact story was posted again but in place of "Microsoft" we inserted "Sony," we would get a poorly structured and barely coherent jimbo rant about Sony screwing over customers and having no games. It is like the handler gives you a pellet every time you say Microsoft and an electric shock everything you say Sony.

*every time

My kingdom for an edit button.

@KwikPwn:

You've already been exposed as a 360 fanboy, even though you try to act reasonable for the other consoles, so of course you would defend JimmyX.

@ Master Snake

I believe it is you who has been exposed, for assuming his comment was directed towards Elsa!

Elsa? I was talkn about the fangirl who wrote that silly blog PEEPS jus need to be more careful with their accounts and not give out there passwords and their account wouldn never behijaked but we seriosly have ENOUCH anti360 blogs and sites already ENOUGH ALREDY

@KwikPwn

How do you the context behind "she got pretty lucky" isn't in light of all the other people who have come out with the same problem with no resolution?

@jimboxxx

Wow, all I can say is cocaine is a helluva drug.

@Janklogs

Hold on, where's the argument here? If this sort of thing happened on either Nintendo or Sony's online service, the "PR shitstorm" would have been ten times larger.