Xbox Live general manager addresses security concerns

Xbox Live general manager Alex Garden addresses security concerns and gives tips on staying safe, but neglects to mention the FIFA 12 money laundering issue.

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In honor of "Safer Internet Day" today, Xbox Live's general manager Alex Garden has published a lengthy, if still a bit vague, letter to the community. He outlines a commitment to be watchful, but stops short of naming the impetus for the concerns.

"Last year, there was a surge of personal information being compromised and sold, and this undoubtedly has had an impact on all of us," Garden wrote, ignoring the elephant in the room: the money laundering scam that has used FIFA 12 to compromise accounts and charge users for content.

"While we here at Xbox have no evidence of a security breach in the Xbox LIVE service, that is of little comfort to our members whose accounts have been compromised by malicious and illegal attacks," Garden told the Xbox community.

"It's in this vein I’m reminded how important it is to listen to you, our members – to really listen, to really hear and to really do something with what you say." He suggests making use of the Xbox security page for tips on how to stay safe, and mentions a few common avenues to breaches. He warns users to set up steep security protocols, and be careful where you log in in case of phishing. If an account is compromised, he says it can usually be restored to its rightful owner within three days.

"We do not take lightly the frustrations we've heard from our loyal Xbox LIVE members and remain committed to addressing and persistently resolving our customers’ individual and collective concerns." He also provides his e-mail address to contact him with unresolved problems.

Garden's letter is well-stated, but avoiding the mention of FIFA 12 seems odd. Garden's reassurances are nice, but more minds would be put at ease if he confronted the issue head-on.

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  • reply
    February 7, 2012 1:00 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Xbox Live general manager addresses security concerns.

    Xbox Live general manager Alex Garden addresses security concerns and gives tips on staying safe, but neglects to mention the FIFA 12 money laundering issue.

    • reply
      February 7, 2012 1:09 PM

      ffs just give us a 2 step authentication process already

      • reply
        February 7, 2012 1:27 PM

        They have something like this in place, they call it one-time use codes you can use to login to "unsafe" places...

        • reply
          February 7, 2012 3:40 PM

          they should just implement an optional two factor authentication

    • reply
      February 7, 2012 1:10 PM

      Also, LOL@3 days

    • reply
      February 7, 2012 1:13 PM

      I don't buy it. I had all my MS points spent from my account on FIFA 12 gold, a game I've never played, but I never lost access to my account. My password for live had numbers, letters, upper and lowercase, and symbols, and I'd never used the same password with any other account. My e-mail hasn't been compromised and I change my password every month.

      Yet when I called they told me someone probably got access to my e-mail and then used that to access my live account. I seriously doubt it since I didn't have any other accounts compromised other than live and I never lost access to my account and never had to recover it from somewhere else. Sounds like a cover up to me.

      • reply
        February 7, 2012 1:14 PM

        I forgot to mention, to their credit, they did reimburse all of my spent points the next day and gave me an extra month of gold.

    • reply
      February 7, 2012 1:35 PM

      This is becoming the RROD issue all over again.

      Denials, Denials, Denials until oops this is going to cost us a billion dollars to fix.

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