I first got pinged about the Xbox Live "Pretexting" account situation earlier in the week.  I got to spend time working closely with the cracker jack folks over at the Millennium campus today who are working the issue.  Major Nelson has blogged about it now with an update, but the point is that this wasn't a technology problem, few people were impacted, and we'll make sure that customers aren't on the hook financially for any activity in the Xbox marketplace if someone got their account.  (With this situation, you don't get the credit card number, just the potential use of the card in the marketplace to buy points)

 

I'd like to publicly thank Kevin Finisterre for spending so much time investigating this and giving us a lot of information about this issue.  Kevin figured out that this was happening, documented it, and once we were able to get a hold of that due to him contacting Major Nelson we moved into action.  We've been talking to Kevin yesteday and today and will continue to do so.

 

Anyways it was like visiting the holy land for me today getting to go over to the Xbox campus and work with those guys.  I got there before 8am and the next thing I knew it was 6:30pm.  You won't find a more passionate group of people about their community.  Once they were able to confirm the information that Kevin provided, action was swift.

 

Anyways a special thanks to Major Nelson for helping drive this and all the Xbox team.  I hated the reason I had to be in their offices but getting to work over there was an experience I wouldn't trade for any amount of money.