Unlucky For Some

So, my xbox profile got hacked this week. I have no idea how. I'm hardly in the habit of giving out my passwords to all the thoroughly convincing unsolicited emails I receive on a daily basis. Although since most of them are from banks and services I've never dealt with in my life that's hardly surprising.

Lovely. Wonderful.

Indeed, I'm hardly what you'd call prolific or gregarious in terms of my online activity, generally preferring to sit on my own on the corner ranting about the Myrka and giggling quietly. Nevertheless somehow I got targeted by T3H L33T HAX0RZ CR3W.


The first I knew of this was when I tried to sign into my profile yesterday morning to look at some random achievement or something, and got hit with messages of irregular activity and told to change my password.

That's right. Microsoft noticed someone was fucking with my account before I did.

I'd apparently gained a new friend as well. Now, it would be rather presumptuous of me to posit that this was the person who had decided to drain my account of points. Surely no-one would be quite that stupid as to leave themselves attached to the account they'd been hacking. But then again, the thing that they'd spent all my points on, the the thing that is now forever burned into my activity history as a mark of shame and blight on my completion percentage, was fucking FIFA. So who knows what kind of idiot was involved.

Before yesterday I wasn't aware of the FIFA scamming problem. After chatting with Microsoft customer support and a quick bit of googling I now am. Seems like it's an ongoing problem. As in ongoing over several titles. The articles I found online referred to FIFA 11 and 12. The game on my profile that I now have to explain to everyone I meet that it totally WASN'T ME playing until the end of time was part 13.

Honestly, what kind of game needs THIRTEEN bloody sequels?

Shut up.

But what about FIFA is it that makes it so ripe for this scamming business? Is it perhaps that the develpoers have created a product with an easily exploitable loophole that allows points to be drained from compromised accounts? Or is it simply that everyone who plays FIFA is a massive cunt?

Take a wild guess.

I think it's probably a combination of the two factors. Multiplied by the fact that the publishers are even bigger cunts than the customers. Let me tell you why.

As part of this scammy hacking bullcrap I was apparently signed up to EA's Origin service. I assume that this somehow facilitates the transfer of my hard earned currency into someone else's pocket. Obviously once I discovered this I needed to get it dealt with. So I go on the site, reset the password and log in to try and contact customer support. Because they don't show you any contact information until you log in. Which is really helpful in cases like this.

Anyway, after MUCH searching I am eventually trapped in a permant loop, forever bringing me back to the same page. The Contact Us page. The Contact Us page where, no matter what I do, all contact options are disabled and unavailable. No email, no chat. Just one phone number in the small print at the bottom of the page.

Bare in mind that at this point it's still early in the morning, and I'm at work. I can't be sitting around on the phone right now as I have important stuff to be getting on with.

Still, eventually it get's to lunchtime and I can nip back home and try and get stuff sorted so I'm not stressing about it for the rest of the day. So we call them up.

Now, I'm not an unreasonable man. I fully expect that I might be on hold for a little while when calling like this. But when you're stuck there listening to one short bit of goddamn country music on a permanent loop, there is no such thing as a little while. There is only a screaming eternity of timeless HELL.

Seriously, it's like they don't really want to talk to anyone, so they're doing their best to just make everyone give up first. But if that's the case why don't they just set up a support email address and then ignore it?

Anyway, I eventually get through to a minion, and have even retained enough sanity to explain the issue. After a while of being stuck on hold he comes back and explains to me what I need to do to get this dodgy account deleted.

I NEED TO EMAIL THEM.

Not that I spent at least TWENTY MINUTES trying to wring an email address out of their support page this morning or anything. Oh no. I guess this is a super special secret email address or something. That's why they couldn't just PUT IT ON THE FUCKING SUPPORT SITE.

Gah. Anyway, an email is sent. And I quickly get a somewhat less than reassuring auto response.

NOTE: Requests relating to account management, billing, subscription fees, technical support, or Terms of Service violations are not supported at this address. For these issues, please contact our Customer Support department via our website

This is clearly going to be fun times getting sorted.

Contrast this with what happened contacting Microsoft. I go on the website, I go to support and click a button and THEY PHONE ME. Within a minute. I talk to the guy, I explain what's going on. He asks for some info from my console, I provide it and the case is logged. By the time I get home again in the evening I've received an email from them having investigated the issue, sorted my account out AND refunded me the points that were stolen. All I need to do is update my password again, re-download my profile, and I'm good to go.

Seriously, THIS is what a good customer support service should be like. Quick, clean and painless. Hats off to Microsoft for being so helpful.

As for EA, well.... I can certainly see why everyone tells them to go fuck themselves.

And me? Well, I now have to spend the entire weekend playing every game ever in order to try and bury that shameful blot that is Fucking Idiots, Failures & Arseholes 13. Seriously, I was gonna paint Owlbears this weekend as well.

Hard life, eh?