@Darkstar_KoP: I didn't see any coincidences.

As for the OT. You're 100% right... I even think "you got phished" or something when my friends ( yes S plural ) accounts got hacked, but there is no god damn way that someone "stole" my password from my computer unless, and this is a HUGE unless, some site out there is collecting passwords and emails, and for some reason I used the same password on both that site and XBL. However I have 3 different levels of email.

1 - Completely Random, generated by Last Pass and saved there. Used for any site that I will access ONLY from my computer

2 - easy, shitty number and letter password like p4ssw0rd that I can remember when I need to use some site outside of the computer, and i need to remember it

3 - super secret password that I use on a handful of sites ( bank, apple, XBL ) where I often need to type the password in, and I need to remember it because I wont be on my computer for it. This password is changed often.

Now I suppose it's possible I was an idiot, and used #2 for xbox instead of #1 however, I didn't get to check before I changed it as I was being hacked at that very time, and once I changed it, I lose the old one. But I use my passport for a few different things, and I'm pretty confident that the password was password #3.

TLDR Version: It's not worth hacking my account because it takes too fucking long and there are easier accounts to hack. I'm anal about passwords and an IT professional, so I know how to make sure I'm not logging in to some Phishing site, and unless MS stores passwords un-hashed, which the rep on the phone told me wasn't the case, my password would have been changed if someone got it via social engineering. That and the call logs would have showed the XBox employee that "I" called in 15 minutes ago trying to reset my password.

All that said, they refused to refund me the money unless I let them do an investigation on my account and lose my account for "25 days" which a friend of mine has had done to him for over 8 weeks now. I said no, then they said they'd do it, took my info and never called me back for over 2 weeks. I called my bank and got the money back in 15 minutes.

People that play Fifa are terrible people confirmed?

Really though, there are people that think credit card theft is worth it to get some stupid fucking virtual cards for a fucking soccer game?

What makes this all even worse is that Microsoft has made it a huge pain in the ass to protect yourself against this kind of stuff. You cannot remove any credit or debit cards tied to your account because of their auto-renew bullshit. You have to call them to convince them to remove it.

Also... the size and complexity of the FIFA Ultimate Team auction stuff is probably why people buy cards with your account, because they can trade them to their own account, then another, then another and before it's just taken away from someone, it's sold to them through eBay or whatever and it's not worth the trouble of hunting them down.

As someone who has intimate knowledge of EA, I can tell you this problem is purely Microsoft-based.

@sofacitysweetheart said:

So you don't even have to own an EA game to be screwed over by that company? Fantastic.

Glad to see you read the article, idiot.

Based on the anecdotes of other victims, I'm not convinced this is a complete explanation.

Welp, changed my password for Xbox Live. I'm not sure if that'll do anything, but I don't feel like removing my CC from my account.

@Jeffsekai said:

@sofacitysweetheart said:

So you don't even have to own an EA game to be screwed over by that company? Fantastic.

Glad to see you read the article, idiot.

NO UR AN IDIOT I AM BIG INTERNET PERSON WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THINGZ BUT CAN INSULT LIKE A 6 Y/O WOOOOOOOOOO

I think my steam account just got hacked, because I suddenly have Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 on my library.

You know what else is alarming... the number of people who say they filed a complaint, their accounts went to a 25 day investigation period, and 25 days turns into 50 or 75 because of missed information or whatever. Just how incompetent are the people doing these investigations? Or rather, how crappy is the system handling them? I can understand one or two getting information missed, but it's like everyone who went into investigation had to wait forever.

@sw0rdfish said:

You know what else is alarming... the number of people who say they filed a complaint, their accounts went to a 25 day investigation period, and 25 days turns into 50 or 75 because of missed information or whatever. Just how incompetent are the people doing these investigations? Or rather, how crappy is the system handling them? I can understand one or two getting information missed, but it's like everyone who went into investigation had to wait forever.

Could be an indication that the backlog of issues is larger than Microsoft is willing to admit. That sort of thing has happened before.

@daggon55 said:

Can anyone speak to how popular FIFA is internationally, is it on the level of Madden in the US?

Over here, FIFA is barely a blip on the radar. Of course there is some interest by those who are not enamored of the American version of Football. But mostly, "Soccer" isn't as important to us by any stretch of the imagination.

I never really understood why if I'm honest. Knowing what I know about European Football, it seems pretty interesting. Though I confess that while I admire the endurance and werewithall it takes professional Footballers over there to compete, I have never gone out of my way to get interested in it either. But I'm a bad example because I'm not much into any sports.

Either way, your point is somewhat valid. Most American players would have a FIFA run on their account stand out. But for me, any sports title would stand out. If someone hacked my account to play Dead Rising or Halo, I'd likely never notice. But hack in and play a Madden game and I'll be on the phone to MS within seconds.

@Darkstar_KoP said:

@sw0rdfish: It has been 2 weeks for me, how long has it been for you? Also the last games we played were gears of war 3 and Fifa 12 that was the coincidence lol

OH HAHA. I actually played those :P I didn't let them investigate my account. I wanted to play so I just told them to Sod off. I just found it funny that their customer is telling them they have a major security problem, and that they were going to NOT look into it because I didn't want to surrender my account for 30 days plus.

My friend has been without his account for 50 days now.

@Darkstar_KoP: Oh Goddamit!

This happened to me as well. I got disconnected while playing Battlefield 3 beta two different times one night and had to recover my gamertag to get back on xbox live, but didn't really think anything of it at the time since everything about the beta was so messed up. The next day while I was at work the account was taken over a third time and whoever it was stole the 2000 or so MS points I had on the account and spent them all on FIFA card packs (Premium Gold Pack and Silver Pack in my download history). They did not charge my credit card for any more points or change the account's password, so when I noticed the 15 points of FIFA achievements the next day (the Ultimate team achievements), and freaked out, I was able to quickly rerecover the account and change the password.

It is disconcerting to see how many people have had pretty much the same thing happen to their accounts. When I contacted Microsoft I got the sense that mine was pretty much an isolated incident.

@Darkstar_KoP said:

@sw0rdfish: It has been 2 weeks for me, how long has it been for you? Also the last games we played were gears of war 3 and Fifa 12 that was the coincidence lol

OH HAHA. I actually played those :P I didn't let them investigate my account. I wanted to play so I just told them to Sod off. I just found it funny that their customer is telling them they have a major security problem, and that they were going to NOT look into it because I didn't want to surrender my account for 30 days plus.

My friend has been without his account for 50 days now.

@Darkstar_KoP said:

@sw0rdfish said:

@Darkstar_KoP said:

@sw0rdfish: It has been 2 weeks for me, how long has it been for you? Also the last games we played were gears of war 3 and Fifa 12 that was the coincidence lol

OH HAHA. I actually played those :P I didn't let them investigate my account. I wanted to play so I just told them to Sod off. I just found it funny that their customer is telling them they have a major security problem, and that they were going to NOT look into it because I didn't want to surrender my account for 30 days plus.

My friend has been without his account for 50 days now.

oh wow so you played Fifa 12...... that just made my day. Thank you

I wouldn't call it play as much as I just get my ass handed to me, but yes I'm a soccer fan. Sorry to disappoint 98% of this board.

@daggon55 said:

@sw0rdfish said:

You know what else is alarming... the number of people who say they filed a complaint, their accounts went to a 25 day investigation period, and 25 days turns into 50 or 75 because of missed information or whatever. Just how incompetent are the people doing these investigations? Or rather, how crappy is the system handling them? I can understand one or two getting information missed, but it's like everyone who went into investigation had to wait forever.

Could be an indication that the backlog of issues is larger than Microsoft is willing to admit. That sort of thing has happened before.

You could very well be right. Blaming it on co-workers being fucking morons is pretty harsh though.

@daggon55: Yes, it is really popular. I don't know the numbers, but its the more profitable franchises of EA Sports, especially in international markets, were Madden doesn't even register...

The main issue with FIFA by itself is that: 1) Its not very popular in the US, so most people there would be alerted by achievements on a game they don't have (I have little doubt hackers are not Americans), and 2) The game has an auction mode that let people buy and sell players using real money, which they can sell back to their accounts (or give as a gift). This is not even DLC, more like microtransactions, which means there is almost no limit to the amount they can spend. That makes it extra tempting to target accounts of people with registered credit card information.

This exact thing happened to me. I'm not sure how they got access to my account, but my account was linked to my debit card. . . bad idea. They charged up a ton of Microsoft Space Bucks and spent them on some crap for FIFA 11. It took me over a month to get my account back. And when I did, I had quite a hard time getting access to my Windows Live ID, so that I could actually use my account. I pointed out to a couple of Microsoft employees that the thief apparently somehow used FIFA to launder the Space Bucks, but everyone whom I spoke with had never heard of that before.

Thank you very much, Patrick, for writing this piece. Also, to everyone out there, try to use points cards, if you can, and get your credit card off of your account, so that your account is useless to the thieves.

See, this is a great article with great reporting.

fifa 12 happened all over my hacked account. only they also spent like 150 dollars in points too :-\

@ZZoMBiE13:

Soccer as you call it is the most popular sport in the world . The biggest and the main sports activity in almost every country except for US and Canada I guess .Probably because you're aliens .

@sw0rdfish said:

You know what else is alarming... the number of people who say they filed a complaint, their accounts went to a 25 day investigation period, and 25 days turns into 50 or 75 because of missed information or whatever. Just how incompetent are the people doing these investigations? Or rather, how crappy is the system handling them? I can understand one or two getting information missed, but it's like everyone who went into investigation had to wait forever.

I am at day 43 of waiting. Every time I call customer service I have to explain the whole story over again. They are always nice and sympathetic, but as near as I can, the fraud department is based on the moon without phones or internet access. Customer service can't (or won't) call them and get a status update on my investigation. They can just see it's still in a queue. If they would at least say "we have a huge backlog, it's taking a lot longer to resolve claims", that would be something. They all just say "man, this ticket is way past due, sorry dude".

It's to the point now where I am considering going scorched earth and just having my my credit card company charge back all the purchases including my Live membership and then Microsoft's lawyers can fight Bank of America's lawyers.

Finally some news on this. Happened to me at the start of the month. Never will I ever put my credit card online again. I had actually tried to remove my card a week prior but could not to any avail and the wait on the phone was well over 2 hours. This needs to be fixed now.

My mom doesn't have a Facebook account! I win!

Yea. Had my account stolen for a few minutes ... purchased 100 bucks in points ... called ms. They said my security question was wrong so I did my work... regained control myself and told them I got it wrong because its in chinese ... they then researched the wrong account the whole time...

Good old m.s. ...

Lesson learned... do things yourself and have a good password ;)

@Hairydutchman said:

"i would not play fifa 12 even if i was being forced by a knife point held at my groin with the imminent threat of genital removal"

This guy deserves it

i agree, what a twat

I had the same thing just happen to me and I don't even use my Xbox anymore (haven't in a long time). 300+ bucks of gamer tags. Had to spend an hour on the phone with Microsoft that now has locked my account, had to call my bank to file a fraud complaint, cancel card, etc. They also attached another email account to my Windows Live account. My password is next to impossible to remember, let alone hack. I don't think this was a password guessing thing. Something else smells extremely funny about all this. Microsoft knows the consoleId's of the people doing this. Why aren't they doing more about this problem. With the consoleId and the IP Address of the person, they should have no problems tracking down these people or person.

Crazy....My account was hacked just last week. FIFA was on the list....I dont use facebook, I dont list my gamertag. Charged 4000 and 6000 points to my account.

This'll probably be the only time I see my beloved Wojciech Szczesny on the front door of my beloved Giant Bomb.

Great article, Patrick.

The problem is that all these sites rely on a username/password combo, just like every other web site. Users then do the obvious thing -- use the same username/password for every site they visit. As time goes on it gets easier and easier to give out.

We need to start tying security to something like your cell phone. Make it a 3072-bit key, something that should last 20 years, and build NFC into devices (computers / consoles). Then you'd need to have the device in the same room as the machine you are trying to log into before using your username/password.

There is way more going on here than Microsoft wants to admit....

My account was hacked too, a couple of weeks ago. They bought 10,000 points. Luckily I got the emails on my phone so I could call Microsoft right away.

I wonder if they were going to buy Fifa crap. This is alarming.

@Kixxi said:

My account was hacked too, a couple of weeks ago. They bought 10,000 points. Luckily I got the emails on my phone so I could call Microsoft right away.

I wonder if they were going to buy Fifa crap. This is alarming.

I woke up to find the same emails on my phone, Microsoft is on speed-dial for me unfortunately. $133 in points I'm on 2 weeks without my account I call at least twice a week just to make sure all the info is right and the situation is being handled.

I had my xbox compromised randomly not too long ago. I got a bunch of messages on my phone saying my card was charged for $120 (total) worth of microsoft points. I was able to stop it and call microsoft before any major damage or FIFA playing, but perhaps the ps3 isn't the only console with security problems?

Also I doubt the leak came from my end since I didn't touch anything xbox live related on my computer in a looooong time. And I'm pretty computer paranoid (NoScript and such).

@John1912: They did those exact charges to my account too.

I feel like investigative journalism in video games has to try way too hard to find a story sometimes. Also, why the hell are people e-mailing Patrick when their account may be hacked?!

@DFSVegas said:

The Nigerian Prince gives FIFA 12 5 stars. In stores now.

Is that 12.5 or 125 stars!?! If the Nigerian Prince is giving it 125 stars, I may have to look into it. That prince is a quality guy. You know, he wants to give me all his money. Don't be jealous guys.

XD

This happened to me as well, starting about four months ago. Someone recovered my gamertag and used about 1500 points to buy FIFA 11 bullshit. Then, about a month later I noticed about 6000 points missing that I had just loaded onto my account the day before. The first time I wasn't sure if I was missing points or I had mistaken how many I had. The second time I knew something was up and called MS. They told me that someone had hacked my profile and purchased a ton of FIFA 11 shit through the in-game store, which is why it didn't show up in my Live transactions. However the game showed up in my recently played games.

Long story short, they refunded the bigger chunk of points but completely bungled the investigation and somehow glossed over the over 1500 points. I've been dealing with those clowns for the past two months to get the issue resolved.

@Kixxi: Yea they were nice enough not to change my email address so I found out within two days of the purchase. I almost ignored it. Thought it may have been for the automatic subscription renewal. Some kinda bonus or something, but when I saw the 2nd email confirmation for another 6000 I called right away. Not being able to log in to check for those points kinda tipped me off as well...

@jimmdogg: The first thing Microsoft told me to do was contact my bank and have the charges reversed. He said the bank would refund me then file a complaint with Microsoft to get the money back.

Does anyone know how EA Accounts work with a password recovery if you contact support?

If you contact MS support they reset your password, and many people have been saying that thier passwords hadn't been reset. For a while my XBL and EA accounts shared the same log-in and password until I lost my email address and Ebay accounts nefariously. Maybe this is how they're getting accounts, or maybe they have log-ins from other sites/services and have had success on XBL.

I've had many emails from EA with reguards to people trying to gain my password and requesting a password change.

I wonder if this is how something is going down?

I worry about it, I don;t want EA to have ANYTHING to do with my xbox account, or indeed my life. They are trying to take my details and to be frank no one needs there bloody servers and no one needs their services.

Why cant they just stop trying to control things and let xbox live deal with stuff.

One Xbox support guy said Jtagged eastern-european boxes.. But what is the cause behind this stuff? Happened to tons of people since July.
 
Meanwhile, the PSN hacks simply kept people from playing games for a while~
 
 
If you don't want to wait three four weeks to get your account fixed, should you get hacked, you should raise some hell and mention the better business bureau or simply file a complain with the bbb directly, a manager will come fix your case in days.

Oh you crazy European people...

The real story is Patrick worked with MTV, what?!?!?!

FIFA 12 is America's single largest cause of cancer.

FIFA 12 is the best sports game out, I borrow FIFA 10 in 09 and the game actually got me into the sport. I started watching epl and got right behind the world cup. I think its the free flowing aspect of the game that American sports don't have closest being hockey