About a month ago, I had noticed that my Xbox account showed FIFA and some other unfamiliar games in my recently played games section. My first thought was that someone had hacked into my account. I looked at my Microsoft points balance, and sure enough, all the $40 worth of credit I had on the account had been used on some “GOLD PACK” thing in late October.

“It’s that darn FIFA game again!” the Microsoft tech support rep said when I called them right after making the discovery.

“Oh?” I inquired. “Has this been happening a lot?”

“Oh yeah. I’m really starting to hate that darn FIFA game these days.” He got my information and then deactivated my account while they investigated the issue. Towards the end of December, they reactivated my account, restored my $40 of credit, and even gave me two month of free Xbox live for my trouble.

The rep had asked me if I gave my account information to anyone else online, and I honestly don’t believe I had. I fell for a phishing scam back in my freshman year of college, so I know exactly what to look for with the scam and how to avoid it. Even so, I checked my email archives and found nothing asking me to sign into my Xbox Live or Microsoft account.

It’s possible that they brute forced the password to my account, as it wasn’t the most complex string of characters to figure out. I made sure that my password is much harder to crack now. But there might be something else going on here that Microsoft needs to investigate and address. Don’t these people leave any sort of paper trail when they’re making these fraudulent transactions?