It pays to be cautious when asked for login credentials, especially in relation to “free” Microsoft points or anything else that would typically require you to splash some cash to get your hands on some goodies.
Case in point, xblfreebies(dot)com who claim to be able to give you free MS points for use with XBox Live:
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The page wants you to enter your XBox Live EMail address and password, while also claiming that the site is “Protected by Norton Website Security” (while failing to offer any additional information about said claim).
It goes without saying that handing over your XBox Live login details to random websites is not a good idea, but we should see how many free points are on offer:
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From 400 to 10,000 – the choice is yours. Go big or go home? More like go big or bankrupt Microsoft, given that 10,000 is roughly equivalent to ?85 / $125 (so that’s probably your second red flag in as many minutes). It doesn’t matter which amount you plump for – the next page tells you in no uncertain terms that the game has changed and you’re now in the running for “4,000 MS points and a 12 month membership” instead.
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Off you go to the next website, which turns out to be a standard “Complete 2 Silver and Gold offers, 9 from the Platinum page and refer 3 friends to do the same” escapade which will probably take some time to complete (it’s also US residents only). Meanwhile, you’ve still given your XBox credentials to the original website – even though you could have bypassed that one completely, arrived at the offer page independently and still have taken part in the “do all of these” offers. You know, if you really wanted to.
Heading back to the XBL Freebies site and moving to the next step will present you with this:
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A big, green spinning wheel thing and a bunch of technical sounding things claim to be “Connecting to gateway” and “Configuring settings” before the “Finalizing of point generation” takes place. It all sounds very impressive until you realise you’re just looking at a non-interactive Gif image:
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Elsewhere, there’s a selection of testimonials from gamers who got their points and the claims are rather confusingly backed up by screenshots of them simply paying for things.
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A screenshot of the email receipt sent out by Microsoft when points have been purchased would be a reasonable place to start, because somebody had to get the ball rolling initially. This? This is pictures of “some dude buys a game”. There’s no way to verify that there’s any relation between the points in the above screenshots and the “free points” this website somehow offers (when the points are coming from an unrelated third party offers network anyway).
Our advice is to accept that something for nothing is a very hard trick to pull off, and that you’re better served saving up instead. At worst, you won’t end up handing over your login credentials to complete strangers. At best, you’ll have a new game and some change left over for that gold plated yacht you always wanted…
Christopher Boyd
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