“My account got hacked!” How many times have we heard that? This week, we discuss account jacking, which is different from hacking.
Moments after listening to the second half of episode 157, you will begin to wonder about what you can do to protect your cherished XBOX gamertags and accounts only to discover that no virus protection in the world can stop a community of people with loose morals and a knack for social engineering. These days, people are gaining access to your XBOX accounts straight from the source – by dialing a phone and calling Microsoft XBOX customer service.
Back in my youthful days of working in a call center, we used to get phone calls from toner scammers. The scam was this: The people calling businesses were banking on the poor lost soul who answered the phone, to give out the model number of the copier. Once they received the model number, they’d ship that business some leaky toner via C.O.D. and stick some poor accountant with a giant invoice. I’d get these calls 5 times per day. When I’d get these calls, I’d want to just hang up on them. Even though I knew without a doubt I had a scammer on the line, I had to maintain professionalism and decorum since my calls were being recorded. After a few frustrating calls with these scumbags, I began to ask the person for their phone number so that I could call them back. Usually, they’d hang up on me immediately. Problem solved. They eventually stopped calling.
I think by adding a couple extra verification steps, Microsoft could do more to protect our accounts. How about asking the caller to recite the phone number tied to their account? Better yet, asking to phone the caller back and matching it up with caller ID. Microsoft Support has always been courteous and helpful to me, and nobody likes to have to spend longer on the phone with a customer than they have to, but taking an extra few minutes would likely save the time it will take them later on, to give the real account holder their money back, and save the frustration of the REAL account holder yelling at them later.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
