Microsoft denies permanent ban your Xbox Live account

Bad news for Xbox gamers everywhere: it seems that somehow you can get permanently banned on Xbox, even though you’re not breaking any rule. This was spotted by YouTuber GhillieMaster who covered the story of several players who got banned recently.

It seems some hackers can invite you to their party to play Xbox games together. And using a tool, which can bypass Microsoft and Xbox security settings, they can easily ban other players. Not only from the party group but also outside of it. This means that a lot of accounts can be compromised even if you decide to leave the group.

For now, it seems this issue originated in the GTA Online party groups, and there is little coverage on whether the bug happened with any other game or not. People get invited to these groups, and their accounts get banned very easily by the group’s admins, who may or may not be hackers, ultimately.

Microsoft has yet to come up with a statement on this problem, but the Xbox community is already pressing the Redmond-based tech giant to recognize and address this issue.

The fact that the appeals are being denied is the scariest part. Xbox needs to restore the account and bans should only ever be carried out by humans, not bots.

Here’s how hackers can get you permanently banned on Xbox Live

Let’s say you suddenly get an invitation to a party group to play GTA Online. You accept, and you get into the group. You play with this group for a while, and suddenly you find yourself banned. How? According to the GhillieMaster, a player experienced such a situation, and they couldn’t even get their accounts back.

Microsoft validates the bans as legitimate, and even if you try to reach them, it seems, it won’t fix anything.

These people, most likely hackers, are using a special tool that allows them to just ban accounts at their whim.

As you can see in the picture, a hacker can easily ban your account. This menu can somehow bypass the Xbox report cooldown, and it means Xbox gets flooded with reports about your account. This will ultimately get you banned.

A solution would be to completely avoid invites to party groups, especially from people that you don’t know. But it seems that even when you are outside of the party, they can still somehow target you with this menu. Ultimately, your whole account is at risk. And if you happen to have purchased a lot of games, then you won’t have access to them anymore.

Update: Microsoft denies the permanent ban on Xbox accounts

In a statement to The Verge, Microsoft says that there is no such thing as a permanent ban on Xbox, at least coming from their team.

Third party apps or tools cannot impact player enforcements, and no volume of inaccurate reports result in an enforcement, only reports that have been reviewed by the Xbox Safety Team and determined to be accurate and in violation of our Community Standards result in an enforcement action such as suspension or an account ban.

Microsoft

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