Skyllus vBi, member of the professional gaming group Team vBi, just can't seem to catch a break. After being recognized by Bungie for making a very popular Halo 3 video, Skyllus was rewarded with the incredibly rare in-game "Recon Armor", which only Bungie employees and a select few Halo community members have. Of course, it didn't take long for some of the shadier members of Halo 3's player base to grow green with envy -- Skyllus has reportedly had his Xbox Live account hacked three times since late October.
The latest hack that Skyllus has suffered has been particularly difficult on him, due to Live's uncooperative customer service. After being told that there was nothing he could do to regain control of the account, and being given the runaround for a few hours, Skyllus had to settle for the promise of an investigation into the account in question.
Keep in mind that any kind of identity theft is illegal, especially if the hacker touches the victim's credit cards (which are easily accessible through information on an XBL account). We hope that the digital notoriety that comes from wearing rare armor in a game is worth the risk of going to real-world jail.
(Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
(Page 1) Reader Comments
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Someone who hacks an account for Horse armor should just kill themselves.
In case you don't believe me anyone that has worked in a call center can tell you. You only need to provide one piece of information and for the info to populate the workers screen. After that it's to their discretion on if the info is needed to be verified.
This guy just sounds like he got a piece of his own medicine. The clan he's apart of goes to customer service and steals others accounts all the time. He just got a piece of his own medicine and I wouldn't be surprised if one of his clan members did it...
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*eyes dart around wildly*
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Customer Service and any reference to Xbox Live should be kept at least 20 pages apart... Customer service... Dumb people...
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Hey MS, if you're going to take our money, at least provide us with some service when we get screwed over by your complete lack of any real security on Live.
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It's even more stupid for Bungie to hide content from people who paid the game to fuel their egos/stupid lie of being a community friendly developer (One of the big guys, LukeMS, won't even respond to PMs, and they typically, on the board in general, won't respond to many comments, and will lock threads if it asks a question they don't like).
I'm still EXTREMELY bitter over what went down when it was found out that no custom game search existed, and how Bungie reacted on their boards (i.e. ignoring everyone, and deleting their posts)
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the "hacker" is apparently posting and bragging on team vBi's message boards... why doesn't their admin just track the kids IP?
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you know you have no life when...
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They called customer support and asked to recover it over to their xbox. Customer support was stupid enough to comply without any further information given.
Just read about it here:
http://www.team-vbi.net/teamvbi/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3826&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
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Its user fanbase is the only thing remarkable about the game... and that's a bad thing.
And the armor, is that it in the picture? WTF? It looks stupid. Looks like some plain stupid basic armor.
Halo3=Gayness
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and, really, it's very easy to spot one out of the not even 10 people who have the armor.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/30/xbox-live-up-and-running-now-with-no-caveats/
How come 'stiq hasn't been covering this?
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in this day and age, where everyone's person information is somewhere online, it's too easy to get anything you want on anyone....
i'm real sure he's out there giving everyone his personal info, username, login, all that jazz....yeah....
i know if i was professional gamer, i'd be doing that..."here have my account! i don't care!!"..
seriously, do some of you people even think before you post the drivel that you do?
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It truly is vomit-inducing to see people blame their fellow gamers, instead of a MS customer service that on average doesn't speak your native language, and now is easily susceptible to social engineering tactics used by teenagers.
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People are just too nusto competitive on there. Blame it on 13 year olds if you want, but MS' efforts to make "must-have" online items like special armors and achievements just feeds the beast.
Next story will be about an IRL PK over a Live item.
It's too bad MS can't figure out how to separate the Live community into the people who are so ultra-competitive as to do things that reduce others enjoyment for their gain from us other people who just want to have a good time. I know they tried to do it in a couple ways already, but it isn't working, and the failure of this really casts a pall over Live for those of us who want to play online but not with these people.
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i'm tired of pubescent pissants ruining teamchat.
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* There is a TOS/rules to follow when posting, many people break this.
* There are already threads about a specific topic and people are needlessly creating threads that cover the exact same topic rather than posting in existing threads.
* Bungie is trying to keep the forums cleans so people who have real questions can be seen.
* When you are working with consumer level customer service, it's normally crap as margins are already small on products sold and every time a customer uses support lines, it further cuts into those margins.
With that said, it sounds like Bungie decided to take it into their own hands and award specific people with in-game content as they chose. If this is the case, it seems like a very bad decision on how to run a game. They should have set goals people need to reach to be able to get any specific piece of content so players at least feel they have a chance of receiving it.
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