What to Expect When Your GFW Live Account is Hacked

When you have an account for a service that keeps your credit card information on file, you hope that the company in question would provide you with some security, and when security fails, you pray that they will do what's right for the customer, but that doesn't always happen. In fact, sometimes companies do nothing at all to help you.

That is exactly what blogger Greg Knight learned about Microsoft when his Games for Windows Live account was hacked. Someone compromised his account and bought two games with his credit card (Batman: Arkham Asylum and Viva Piñata) using 10,000 Microsoft Points, to the tune of $125. He later discovered that his account had been hacked and the hackers changed the "alternate email address" to an account from guerrillamail.com.

After fixing that, Knight told Microsoft about the breach, who then locked down his account to investigate what had happened. After about a month a company representative told Knight that they found no evidence that his account had been hacked. Knight alleges that a Microsoft representative told him that they couldn't help him because his account wasn't connected to an Xbox 360. The representative also told him that he would have to go to his bank to convince them fraud occurred in order to get his money back.

This did not sit well with Knight so he decided to take the matter to his blog, and the court of public opinion. Here's what he wrote:

“Microsoft: If this is indeed your hacking/fraud policy, I find it disturbing. It is not acceptable to ignore credit card fraud that was committed on your service on the grounds that the victim doesn’t own the device that you want them to own. It costs you nothing to simply reset some intangible numbers, refund some money, and let bygones be bygones,” wrote Knight in his blog. “This could have been a very simple matter, but now look at what I’ve had to do. By the time you read this it will be too late for you to make good; the bank will have already been notified. I don’t get by on a lot of extra money after debts and bills are factored in. And yet I was very understanding of your procedure, waiting a month, a month when I really could have used that money. But you blew it.

It is too late for you to make good of your own volition so now it’s my turn to take my money back,” he added. “You didn’t even lose any product to whoever committed the fraud, so I leave public shaming to be your punishment. I hope everyone who reads this is as appalled as I am at how flippant and uncooperative you were over a serious matter like credit fraud.”

So far, Microsoft has not publicly commented on this story.

Source: Industry Gamers