New ban wave?


Recommended Posts

Yeah there are a lot of innocent people being banned apparently.

That sucks :/

Unless they can prove they were innocent I'd be very skeptical of those reports. People are stupid and will try anything to convince others they were innocent. Hell half of them probably think they're innocent while admitting they played pirated games. Something about it just isn't illegal to a bunch of them.

Good on MS though. I'm sure that if my console ID on my arcade can tell MS that I've had a HDD connected to it (and thus I'm not eligible for a free memory card through their program) it can also tell if the console has been tampered with, and I'm sure that only needs to get sent to MS once over Live without the user knowing to get them banned.

-Spenser

Omg I was actually banned! Time to sell up and go ps3 only!

I see what you did there...

Personally, I'm glad that these bans are heavily enforced, I've never previously heard of the innocent being banned. Whatever technical system MS have for doing the banning seems to be working well.

How can Microsoft ban Sea Pirates ? dont they live in somalia or somethin ????? was a bill gates born in somalia as well ?

ummmmmm i think the moonshine and roast squirrel are taking their toll ........

:p love ppl posting when high!!

None of my peeps are banned, and they are heavy heavy online players :pirate:

Edited by Draken
Funny thing is, Microsoft haven't changed the detection method ... It's just people who played bad rips.

Well done on pulling that nugget of information out of thin air (Y). You don't know what's been used to detect pirates in this round of bans more than anyone else, nobody will know for a couple of weeks (most likely), so don't just assume Microsoft have sat on their collective arses for the last year, chances are they've got plenty of ways to detect pirates that haven't been accounted for, yet. Put it this way, not a single 360 backup is a true 1:1 copy, they just rely on the firmware to make it look as genuine as they can.

Yeah there are a lot of innocent people being banned apparently.

That sucks :/

"apparently", unless you actually know a genuinely innocent person that's been banned so far, I'd take those reports with a grain of salt.

I've only had a brief look around, but it seems as though the majority of people getting banned had Samsung drives.

Well done on pulling that nugget of information out of thin air (Y). You don't know what's been used to detect pirates in this round of bans more than anyone else, nobody will know for a couple of weeks (most likely), so don't just assume Microsoft have sat on their collective arses for the last year, chances are they've got plenty of ways to detect pirates that haven't been accounted for, yet. Put it this way, not a single 360 backup is a true 1:1 copy, they just rely on the firmware to make it look as genuine as they can.

"apparently", unless you actually know a genuinely innocent person that's been banned so far, I'd take those reports with a grain of salt.

I've only had a brief look around, but it seems as though the majority of people getting banned had Samsung drives.

I don't think that info was pulled out of thin air, looks to be that people playing the review copies of certain games is what got them banned.

I love the MS bans, all the pirates get what they deserve!

Not all. Just the ones that aren't ninja. None of my friends are banned. Even my friend that has been playing GoW2 online since it got leaked. The people that get stuck in these bans either have real bad luck, or as I said, aren't ninja :shiftyninja:

Though you think there is a lot of chaos now, how much do you think there will be when NXE goes live? lmao

Well done on pulling that nugget of information out of thin air (Y). You don't know what's been used to detect pirates in this round of bans more than anyone else, nobody will know for a couple of weeks (most likely), so don't just assume Microsoft have sat on their collective arses for the last year, chances are they've got plenty of ways to detect pirates that haven't been accounted for, yet. Put it this way, not a single 360 backup is a true 1:1 copy, they just rely on the firmware to make it look as genuine as they can.

Well, one of the guys behind the firmwares stated this themselves after looking over what information is being sent. It's over at Xbox-scene but you would know, considering your a regular in those communities.

I think it's strange how "every single time" MS does a new ban wave, some "innocent" user gets banned too. How exactly does anyone know that person was "innocent" to begin with? I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but the likelihood of it happening seems slim.

I think it's good they're proactively protecting it.

Why should pirates get the same games and experience that the rest of us pay good money for? And this isn't anything new, Microsoft frequently go through "ban fests" where they just ban everyone who's been playing illegal games/using a modded console in one hit.

I think it's good they're proactively protecting it.

Why should pirates get the same games and experience that the rest of us pay good money for? And this isn't anything new, Microsoft frequently go through "ban fests" where they just ban everyone who's been playing illegal games/using a modded console in one hit.

because they also paid for live just like you

because they also paid for live just like you

So that gives them the right to pirate games? If they're pirating games, they should be prepared for the consequences if they're caught. They willingly paid for the Live service knowing full well that they could be banned at any point. They don't get a get out of jail free card just for paying for Live.

It's all done by disk checks and they haven't changed them since the last round according to the firmware guy they have. I'm thinking a big chunk of those banned on this wave have been caught out by a recent plethora of 'review copies' of games that seem to have turned up recently (most notably Saints Row 2 and Quantum of Solace). Could also be the copies of Gears 2 and Call of Duty: WaW that were floating around stupidly early. Microsoft are quite clever doing this just before Christmas, making their end of year sales look quite good. ;)

You're right Audioboxer, if they banned accounts that would a) be far cheaper for the pirates and b) not as much money to be made from doing that.

i think this happened for one of two reasons

1. idiots downloaded and played gears of war on live too early.

2. people who are downloading the games are burning the .iso files in windows, and not the .dvd files when burning games in windows (you have don't have to do that on a mac :p )

either way, i have no sympathy, you knew what the possible circumstances were, so if you got banned, sucks to be you.

Well done on pulling that nugget of information out of thin air (Y). You don't know what's been used to detect pirates in this round of bans more than anyone else, nobody will know for a couple of weeks (most likely), so don't just assume Microsoft have sat on their collective arses for the last year, chances are they've got plenty of ways to detect pirates that haven't been accounted for, yet. Put it this way, not a single 360 backup is a true 1:1 copy, they just rely on the firmware to make it look as genuine as they can.

"apparently", unless you actually know a genuinely innocent person that's been banned so far, I'd take those reports with a grain of salt.

I've only had a brief look around, but it seems as though the majority of people getting banned had Samsung drives.

they haven't changed their methods. It has nothing to do with the drives. Its the way they are burning them and what rips they are downloading. People need to check their sources, not just blindy download a game from god knows where. Trust me, you can play live no problem with burned games as long as you are doing everything right.

because they also paid for live just like you

and there is TOS that people know about and if they broke them, then screw'em.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Simple answer is yes, you will still get the Windows updates and as long as browser is up to date, you will be good. Only thing secure boot does is protect you against boot level threats and make it harder to install other OS's. I've been looking into this pretty thoroughly lately myself as wifes computer has secure boot disabled plus my other, older computers that run Linux, don't have secure boot enabled. Have seen all kinds of questions about this on the Linux Mint and MX Linux forums. Just don't suddenly enable secure boot now.
    • How many other companies will follow Ford's lead? Or, have they already gotten lazy and become enslaved to AI--and now can't figure out how to get out of that mess.
    • Why would any self-respecting intelligent person follow any recommendation by Donald's GOP administration? With almost two years of fabrications, deceit, and blatantly illegal behavior, why believe them now? They had best be gone after the November 2026 election, so we'll wait and see.
    • AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      149
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!