Reports: Banned Xbox 360s briefly allowed back on Xbox Live, promptly banned again

Reports began swirling Tuesday evening that Xbox Live users with banned Xbox 360 consoles were able to reconnect to Microsoft's online service. Forum users across Xbox.com, Xbox-Scene and NeoGAF claimed to have reconnected banned consoles, though said consoles were unable to download content from Xbox Live, including Marketplace purchases and game updates. As of early this morning, however, Xbox-Scene users are reporting that previously banned consoles have been totally barred from Xbox Live once again.

It's unclear just what happened, though Xbox-Scene user DUBiSM noticed Tuesday afternoon that the Xbox Live status page (image above) noted that users could experience problems "creating new Xbox Live accounts, managing those accounts, or recovering an account on a different console." The message has since been changed to warn of Modern Warfare 2 phishing scams.

On Twitter, Xbox Live director of policy and enforcement Stephen Toulouse said that all banned consoles are still banned, adding, "you can't trust message boards." For the moment, it would appear that the alleged reconnections were a fluke, though still a fluke that deserves attention given the ongoing drama surrounding the recent attack on Sony's PlayStation Network. We've contacted Microsoft for further comment.

Reader Comments (39)

Charitable Microsoft were merely trying to divert attention away from the train wreck PSN.

So a bunch of folks with banned consoles are just trying and trying to get them back online and thought MS would just open the flood gates again? I find it odd there are forums full of these people going back and forth on this. Sad really.

@Duke
Not trying to defend anyone here, but what's a bit more likely is that some people still had their banned consoles connected to their networks for various reasons & unexpectedly signed in to Live when they turned the units on.

The ultimate cock tease.

Good. Bring their hopes up and tear them down. Good Microsoft, good.

@DasMadHatter

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/8159/goodgood.jpg

SIKE!

Does this change anything about them being able to ban people with J-Tagged boxes? No, it doesn't. XBL is still infested with hackers who have ways around everything Microsoft throws at them. Ban a tagger and they're back online again a short while later.

@oJMan240o

After they've payed money to get a new ID.

Eventually those people are going to stop wanting to pay money and give up.

I wonder if Sony's hacking troubles will spread to Microsoft; while Sony currently seems to be a lightning rod for hacker anger, my opinion is that hackers do what they do because they can, and I wonder if their recent successes against the PSN won't eventually spill over onto Xbox Live.

@EatMoreBread Are you kidding? Hackers went from XBox to Playstation when that asshole Hotz broke it open. Not the other way around. XBox 360 was compromised a few months after launch. Microsoft is just used to having to deal with that stuff all the time because that's what they do with Windows anyways. Microsoft has real world software experience, whether or not you consider their software useful, that's still a fact.

@EatMoreBread Indeed it does. Especially when one of the biggest group of hackers(Anonymous)*, seems to be lead by amateuristic and shortthought leaders.

(* I'm not saying Anonymous was the main attacker, but I'm sure parts of the group contributed.)

@oJMan240o

Sorry, I mean to say "on the level that the PSN is currently undergoing." the console has been hacked, sure, but to my knowledge, the XBL service hasn't been hacked so severely that it's been down for over a week. Or am I wrong? The last outage I remember was a Christmas day outage that only lasted for a few days and was maintenance related, but that was before I was a 360 owner.

@i slim shady l

Where in the world do you get your information from? J-tag boxes are still all over the place. Or is that guy with controller buttons in his username that I ran into in Black Ops who could carry his own team's flag not a hacker now? Idk, but all the old Call of Duty games beg to differ with you... because they are filled with hackers. As are Gears 1 and 2. Who else do you think screws up the leaderboards in all these games? Fairies? Just because you haven't run across them among the millions of people on XBL, doesn't mean they aren't there. All you have to do is bring up the ranks and head to the top. It's pathetic.

External Intrusion!

Doesn't change the fact that people with J-tagged boxes unban themselves on a regular basis. If they make headway against those people, then that's news.

GOOOOOD!!!!!

Makes me think that MS is just doing it for the lulz

I know there was a free weekend for non-gold subscribers... maybe someone accidentally put a check mark in "allow banned consoles" as well.

/assuming there are check boxes
//there are probably check boxes

@xreadmore

It could be radio buttons.

@xreadmore
there are always check boxes even if you cant see them there is a check box that turns on the check box.....

BAM!

The only thing they could download was random episodes of Punk'd from Zune.

b b but I pay $50 a year so stuff like this doesnt happen!

@A Burger
.....$60.....

@jiggypoo With the almost constant sales on XBL subscriptions, you'd be unwise to spend more than $45 / year on it =P

@Electrium

You caught me red handed. I just renewed for $27.99.

*Insert MS troll face here*

What makes me wonder is who would be the useless sap that keeps trying to connect a banned console in order to report this.

how do people find this stuff out? are there losers that just keep trying to log in with banned 360s?

More like Xbox Undeaded, amirite?

If they're just gonna pirate anyway, why not let them back on so they can at least spend money on Xbox live subscriptions and DLC?

Why not just let the pirates back on so they can spend money on DLC and XBL subscriptions?

@Misanthropic Gamer

Yea ALL of that won't happen. For srsly. Srsly? Srsly.

@Misanthropic Gamer because games cost more

read xbox-scene forums and there banned again LOL

I might have had something to do with making old gamertags avalible again. Just a guess, though.

I must post this as I am extremely frustrated and PISSED off because XBOX permanently suspended my sons account because of a hacker. My son was playing a War game and was invited into a room to play. He noticed something really strange about the match that he was playing in. When it was over, he left. Then when he logged back in to his game he was given a message that his account was PERMANENTLY SUSPENDED. I called xbox to try and get this resolved and was told to go to the Forums and make the complaint there. So I did. The next morning there was a response telling me that my son was spreading malicious threats and viruses in his game. I tried to explain to them that he did not intentionally do anything wrong that he was invited into a game lobby to play. They refused to reinstate the account and strongly encouraged me "not to post any more OR ELSE". He did nothing wrong. He does not have a modded console and didn't spread viruses. This is not fair and XBL is gaining HUGE financial gain for all of us that don't get refunds. This all happened last night (5/28/2011). How do you tell a 10-year-old that he can never play on xbox live again?

@COMtnMist
This exact thing happened to our 11year old last nite (May 30, 2011) we did the same thing called, the forums and so on. If you have any ideas or make any headway please post. Our 11 year old son is devistated. Plus he also had microsoft points that were purchased as well which are now null and void. Bunch of BS.

Reports: Banned Xbox 360s briefly allowed back on Xbox Live, promptly banned again

Reader Comments (39)

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:42PM mrmobius said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:43PM Duke said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 3:02PM swooded said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:43PM jph89 said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:44PM DasMadHatter said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:01PM Bekefel said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:56PM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 8:51PM oJMan240o said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 9:55PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:58PM EatMoreBread said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:03PM oJMan240o said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:20PM RetroGamer said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 2:35PM EatMoreBread said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 8:57PM oJMan240o said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:58PM Vcize said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:59PM oJMan240o said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 12:59PM Shimmy said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:06PM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:07PM xreadmore said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:18PM Vcize said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:42PM Protege420 said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:10PM bloodlinejake said

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Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:18PM A Burger said

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Posted: Apr 27th 2011 2:11PM Electrium said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 2:31PM jiggypoo said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:32PM Jamvaan said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:51PM TheShaper said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 1:53PM onlysublime said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 2:30PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 8:42PM Misanthropic Gamer said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 2:50PM Misanthropic Gamer said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 4:42PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 4:53PM sticks said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 8:03PM dblue said

Posted: Apr 27th 2011 8:58PM Voe Guy said

Posted: May 29th 2011 11:57PM COMtnMist said

Posted: Jun 1st 2011 11:28AM mhluvsds said

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