The Dink Network

Thousands of Xbox Live users have fallen victim to a phishing scheme perpetrated by online thieves.

The scam entailed sending emails to users directing them to a phoney website offering free Microsoft Points. To redeem the points, individuals were asked to enter confidential information, allowing the criminals to access their bank accounts.

Craftily, the criminals took only small amounts of money over a protracted period of time, making the theft hard to detect.

According to The Sun, which broke the story, gamers in 35 countries have fallen foul of the scam, with the average lost approximately £100 (around $155).

Click here!

If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

It's sad that people are dumb enough to fall for this shoot.

But on a funny note, it looks like even the great power of Microsoft cannot stop the evil bad people.

Reminds me of the recent PSN leaks, only it's the gamers' faults for this.

Greed is a cuss.

i *HATE* thieves!

Idiots that fall for this stuff.

This isn't even Microsoft's fault. Their servers wen't hacked into, it was idiots who thought they could claim free microsoft points for nothing.

Phishing is such a terrible email scam. Personally, I am a Nigerian Prince, and I lost a great deal of money to one of these phishing scams, and the money was placed in a bank account I did not have access to. So I sent out a great deal of emails to people in other countries, asking for their help in recovering the money these phishing scammers had stolen from me, telling them the whole story about how I was a Nigerian Prince, and nobody believed me! Instead, a bunch of scammers started copying me and falsely claiming to be Nigerian Princes trying to reclaim stolen money themselves... and they were the same scammers who had ripped me off! I have been trying to track them down, and emailing anyone who may have been contacted by them, asking for help and explaining my plight as a Nigerian Prince.

Hardly anyone ever emails me back, but most of them send back sarcastic emails explaining to me that Nigeria is a democracy and not a kingdom and mocking me for being a Prince. Duh, I know that, but what these people don't know is that Nigeria is the most populous and diverse nation in Africa, the central government of Nigeria is weak, and there are a large number of autonomous local, regional, and tribal governments in Nigeria, from villages with village elders all the way up to full-fledged kingdoms with Kings, such as the Kingdom of Nri in which I am a Prince.

Anyway, I am still trying to get the money back that those phishing scammers took from me. I can't believe I fell for their scam thinking I could get free Microsoft Points for Xbox Live! I am a gamer! Our kingdom is dirt poor! I'm serious! We're so poor we literally use dirt as our currency! And now that my bank account full of dirt has been emptied, I have no dirt to plant my crops in! Not real crops! I play FarmVille on Facebook!

@Yeti
Where are you from?
You sound like a Texan(no offense).

Upstate New York. And no, I don't sound like a Texan. I don't have an accent at all. OK, if I go to Europe they tell me I have an American accent, but whatever, they're the ones with funny accents, not me. Nobody in the U.S.A. thinks I have an accent.