Love-seeking spambots are wreaking havoc on Xbox Live

It’s a little surprising we haven’t seen many stories about this. Have you started to recently receive strange messages from users who have just created their Xbox Live accounts? Are they pretending to be 20-year-old women wanting your love? Maybe you’ve spoken with them and they want you to pay for a “private show”? Or maybe they just want your credit card information from the get-go? Well, you aren’t alone. Hundreds of Xbox Live users are complaining on Facebook, Twitter and forums that Xbox Live is filling up with spambots. Some of the responses lead us to believe that they aren’t spambots but actual people but you never know. We’ve personally experienced this as well and get around a dozen or so messages a day. It’s quite aggravating and Microsoft needs to address this problem as soon as possible. Luckily this problem isn’t limited to Xbox Live because we’ve experienced a similar situation on PlayStation Network recently. However, the volume of messages we receive on Xbox Live outweighs the ones on PlayStation Network.

We’re positive that Microsoft is aware of the problem and are looking of a fix. However, this still a problematic situation for many gamers. Spambots will always be a problem but the company can add an option to filter messages. For example, messages which start with something like “I’m a 22-year-old gamer looking for love” should probably be flagged by the servers. Additionally, giving the option to only be contacted by gamers they’ve played games with in the past or regularly interact with is another way around this. Maybe only allow users who have at least 1 Gamerscore to message people. Lastly, just introduce a junk messages folder which gives people the ability to review who’s sent them messages ignore the rest. Skimming through messages isn’t the problem, the problem is that you’re constantly bombarded by them on your Xbox One or your phone. Hopefully the company will acknowledge the issue and discuss solutions publicly soon.