Playfire.com - Be careful [Updated]

Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 6:06 am | #46

Carebear

Quote by ImpalereX:

Benji,

Will you be addressing any of the issues raised in this blog post and comments or will you be running away again?

I have responded, my comment is awaiting moderation by Cyberknight. I'm not running away from anything, as I've said, feel free to contact me directly or I'll try and respond on here.

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Re: Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 6:40 am | #47

Quote by Benji:

Hi, Benji here from Playfire. Just wanted to explain what we're doing and try and clear up some of the misunderstandings that have been floating about.

Firstly, we're not a phishing site. At no time do we store your Xbox LIVE password, nor do we use it for anything other than what is explained on the page.

Secondly, we don't spam friends lists. When you verify your gamertag we show your friends list and you have the option to select/deselect and invite them via an Xbox LIVE PM. We do not, and will not ever send messages without your consent.

I repeat, your account would not have been compromised by us. We don't store passwords and do not use them for anything other than scraping your actual gamertag and sending invite PMs. It works in the same way as an email friend finder (such as those ourselves, Facebook, MySpace etc. use).

You do not have to verify your gamertag in order to use the site, go in via the homepage to skip this. Feel free to get in touch with me directly if you have any more questions. I'll try to answer questions on here as well.

Hello Benji,

Even if what you say is true, the collection of LIVE ID's and their respective passwords violates Microsoft's policies. If you continue to collect this information, even without storing it, you will be replying to the Microsoft legal team before long. There's a reason why other communities don't do this too. It's insecure, and it's against Microsoft's policies.

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:12 am | #48

Benji

California

Carebear

Quote by WitnessBoobie:

Hello Benji,

Even if what you say is true, the collection of LIVE ID's and their respective passwords violates Microsoft's policies. If you continue to collect this information, even without storing it, you will be replying to the Microsoft legal team before long. There's a reason why other communities don't do this too. It's insecure, and it's against Microsoft's policies.

We'd love to do this using an API with some form of authentication but that's currently not an option as there's nothing available. Other communities do ask for usernames and passwords - what we are doing is no different to the way Facebook, for example, ask for your Hotmail address and password in order to send invites to your friends (Google have done this too) - we allow you to send a PM instead of an email.

It's meant to be a way for you to invite your friends, not as a malicious tool in any way to send spam or capture passwords. We wouldn't last five seconds if we were doing that and we intend for Playfire to be around for a long time.

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Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:46 am | #49

I am highly confused now....should we mistrust 360voice and gamerDNA too????

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Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:49 am | #50

Thanks for the heads up Boobie. No matter what this "Benji" guy says.

By the way Benji, how did you find this site? Do you just google your name and look for people letting word of your scam out so that you can quickly go there and try to defend yourself. There wouldn't be so many people taking about this unless it were, in fact, a scam. If this is not a scam, you should have no problem sharing your microsoft live id and password to all of us. Its not like we're going to store it anywhere.

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Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:50 am | #51

Benji

California

Carebear

Quote by AaronTWright:

I am highly confused now....should we mistrust 360voice and gamerDNA too????

They are both legit sites as well, I honestly don't think you have anything to worry about with them.

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Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:52 am | #52

Quote by Drunk3nDuffman:

Thanks for the heads up Boobie. No matter what this "Benji" guy says.

By the way Benji, how did you find this site? Do you just google your name and look for people letting word of your scam out so that you can quickly go there and try to defend yourself. There wouldn't be so many people taking about this unless it were, in fact, a scam. If this is not a scam, you should have no problem sharing your microsoft live id and password to all of us. Its not like we're going to store it anywhere.

lol it seems that way lol

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Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:53 am | #53

Benji

California

Carebear

Quote by Drunk3nDuffman:

By the way Benji, how did you find this site?

I was emailed a link to this thread by an existing Playfire member.

Quote by Drunk3nDuffman:

There wouldn't be so many people taking about this unless it were, in fact, a scam.

Unfortunately, people are eager to jump on bandwagons and spread rumours on the internet - there's a lot of people commenting about Playfire who haven't even been to the site as well as spreading misinformation (such as PMs being sent without permission which does not happen).

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Re: Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 7:56 am | #54

Quote by Benji:

Quote by Drunk3nDuffman:

By the way Benji, how did you find this site?

I was emailed a link to this thread by an existing Playfire member.

Quote by Drunk3nDuffman:

There wouldn't be so many people taking about this unless it were, in fact, a scam.

Unfortunately, people are eager to jump on bandwagons and spread rumours on the internet - there's a lot of people commenting about Playfire who haven't even been to the site as well as spreading misinformation (such as PMs being sent without permission which does not happen).

Then how come none of your current Playfire.com members are around backing you up as well. It seems like your current members are the ones telling everyone not to join.

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Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 8:09 am | #55

Quote by AaronTWright:

I am highly confused now....should we mistrust 360voice and gamerDNA too????

To answer your question, you can trust them, this is taken from the site:

Unattributed Quote:

Who runs 360voice.com?

Trapper Markelz (ChangeAgent), Stephen Sopp (Fatty Chubs) and David Larrabee (Squidpunch).

Trapper Markelz was born in Alaska, went to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and lives in Arlington, MA with his wife and daughter. He is currently VP of Products for GamerDNA, Inc.

Steve Sopp was born in Pennsylvania, graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife and dog. He is currently the lead data architect for GamerDNA, Inc.

David Larrabee was born, and still lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two children. He is currently working as an Applications Developer for New York City Vacation Packages.

We have personal websites at www.trappermarkelz.com, www.istephen.com and www.squidpunch.com.

Steve is an Xbox MVP and we are all members of the Xbox Community Developer Program (XCDP).

Steve and Trapper have been working on numerous internet projects since college. They were the first people to record super bowl commercials and put them online for voting (1998). They were involved with teamdvd.com, one of the first review sites for DVD movies when the media was brand new. They also were involved with filmtease.com, the first movie review sites to utilize IM-style conversational reviews. 360voice.com is their latest collaboration, and they never dreamed it would attract enough attention to allow them to go full time working on gamer communities.

David has worked on numerous projects in the Xbox community (TheLiveEye, 360friendspot) and joined the team in February 2008.
How did you come up with the idea for your site?

As a member of the Xbox Community Developer Program, Steve had access to the live gamer feeds and was playing around with the data. I attended the O'Reily Emerging Technologies conference where I heard Bruce Sterling give a keynote about blogjects (a term coined by Julian Bleecker)... futuristic objects that write "blogs" about their interactions with the world and other devices just like humans write about their interactions with the world and other people. In discussing this keynote with Steve, it didn't take long for us to see how this academic concept could relate to the Xbox 360, albeit in a much more scaled back fashion. We got quick prototype of the idea up and running in a few days. The response from the prototype was so huge that we immediately developed it into a full blown product which became 360voice.com.

Here is a link to the about page where the info comes from: ClickMe

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12/31/69 7:00 pm | #56

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12/31/69 7:00 pm | #57

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12/31/69 7:00 pm | #58

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Re: Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 2:18 pm | #59

Benji

California

Carebear

Good points. We've made it optional now so you can skip the invite friends step and you don't have to verify your gamertag anymore. If and when we reintroduce this in the future it will definitely be optional.

Thanks for the feedback (replied on the blog as well).

Quote by PSORaine:

As I posted in the blog imaplere linked to here:

Quote by Raine Malker (yes, ok, I use that as my full name for stuff connected to PSORaine):

Benji,

The thing about myspace and facebook and importing contacts is... IT'S OPTIONAL. To join your site, and claim my gamertag, apparently I have to spam my friends with invites before I even know if the site is good or not? Not cool. Also, I have a 360v account... an a360p account, an xba account... pretty much an account with every xbox related site, and my gamertag is linked to my user name. I have NEVER given my live ID or pw to any other site besides xbox.com. It's an email I ONLY use for my gamertag, and it's a password I don't use for any other account. Why is your site so incredible that you feel people will be lying about gamertags to get in, anyway?

Also, to post this comment, I had to give my gmail address and password. THAT'S FINE. My gmail account isn't linked to my credit card info.

Have a nice day!

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Re: Avoid Playfire.com

01/29/09 2:57 pm | #60

Quote by AaronTWright:

I am highly confused now....should we mistrust 360voice and gamerDNA too????

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but 360Voice does not ever request your LIVE ID and password. 360Voice definitely is trustworthy.

Quote by Benji:

We'd love to do this using an API with some form of authentication but that's currently not an option as there's nothing available. Other communities do ask for usernames and passwords - what we are doing is no different to the way Facebook, for example, ask for your Hotmail address and password in order to send invites to your friends (Google have done this too) - we allow you to send a PM instead of an email.

It's meant to be a way for you to invite your friends, not as a malicious tool in any way to send spam or capture passwords. We wouldn't last five seconds if we were doing that and we intend for Playfire to be around for a long time.

The absence of an api doesn't justify insecurely collecting LIVE credentials, and then screen scraping to access the messaging system.

Whether you realize it or not, this is against Microsoft's policy, and their legal team will be all over this. I'm sure Facebook and Google either have an agreement with Microsoft or are using the official api. You are doing no where near the same thing.

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