Your Security is Important to Me Since today is Safer Internet Day, I thought itd be a good opportunity to share a few things

that have been on my mind these last several months. Here at Microso ft we view this day through many lenses from online safety to privacy to account and data security and more, and we take your security and online safety very se riously. As all of us know, account hijacking across the Internet continues to grow. Its a thriving albeit illegal industry affecting online services the globe over. Last year, there was a surge of personal information being compromised and sold, and this undoubtedly has had an impact on all of us. While we here at Xbox have no evidence of a security breach in the Xbox LIVE service, that is of little comfor t to our members whose accounts have been compromised by malicious and illegal a ttacks. Its in this vein Im reminded how important it is to listen to you, our members to really listen, to really hear and to really do something with what you say. I ca n assure you we are listening and continue to take aggressive steps to help prot ect you against ever-changing threats. We also care deeply about how this ongoin g issue affects your experience with Xbox LIVE and your trust in us. Security is an ongoing battle. No matter how well we work to improve security an d we are working every day to bring new forms of protection to Xbox LIVE our wor k will never end. With every measure we put in place, ill-intentioned people wil l create new ways to attack online services. Thats why I believe its more important than ever that our members are armed with i nformation and security tools to actively partner with us in this war on fraud. We have a dedicated web page at http://xbox.com/security detailing all the steps you can take today to help protect your account. What youll see here is the most common sources of attack continue to involve: social engineering to gather information about the user to guess the password; phishing, whereby the user types the account password into an illegitimate websi te that is pretending to be something else; malicious software on the computer that has captured the password; or using the same password from another online service that has been breached. I share these realities in hope that our members will work with us to reduce the ease of access for hackers. Personal account security starts with setting stron g passwords and routinely changing them, using a valid email and a unique passwo rd for each online service, adding a phone number, alternate email address, and a unique and private security question via the Windows LIVE ID Account Managemen t site (https://account.live.com/Proofs/Manage), and reducing the amount of pers onal information shared online or through social networks. More and more, being mindful of where you login to online services, even when not using Xbox LIVE, an d using single-use codes (http://explore.live.com/windows-live-sign-in-single-us e-code-faq), provides added protection, especially when youre signing in from a P C that isnt your own. Working together we can prevail over the criminals. I realize it may fall flat when we dont share specific details of our security ar chitecture. However, some of the security measures we have in place to help prot ect our members include password-attempt throttling, CAPTCHA (an industry-standa rd anti-scripting measure designed so that an actual human needs to answer the c hallenge), strong proofs (trusted PC, pin sent to cell phone, secondary e-mail a nd security questions), and account lockout for multiple failed attempts and com promised accounts, which we investigate and recover to the rightful owner. Getting ahead of potential threats of harm is an important area of focus. At a b

roader level, Microsoft continues to investigate cyber-criminals and bot nets, a nd help shut them down. And although this is an industry-wide challenge, we are an industry-leading company that believes in our responsibility to actively addr ess online fraud and identity theft. As part of this commitment, we continue to put in place security features and process improvements to help secure Xbox LIVE . Recovering compromised accounts in a timely manner is also a priority and an are a where weve made, and will continue to make, improvements. We have invested more resources in our account recovery process and as a result, for most new fraud c ases we are now able to investigate and return accounts within three days. For u sers who have added strong proofs to their accounts, this may be as fast as 24 h ours. We still have a few cases that are taking longer to fully recover and some refunds are still being processed, but were making great strides. We hope our cu stomers are experiencing the improvements firsthand. We do not take lightly the frustrations weve heard from our loyal Xbox LIVE membe rs and remain committed to addressing and persistently resolving our customers in dividual and collective concerns. For now, if you have a problem we havent yet re solved, please email me. Also tune into Major Nelsons podcast this week to hear m ore about our work in the war on fraud. With my sincere commitment to listen and take action, Alex Garden Email: Alex dot Garden at Microsoft dot com General Manager, Xbox LIVE