Seriously: What’s up with all the Xbox One spam requests?

This is why we can’t have nice things.

I review a bunch of games — as I should, writing for a games website — and as a result, I quite frequently have to change my Xbox and PlayStation settings to hide my gamertag and activity. In quiet periods, however, I get to roam free, letting you all see that I watch way too much Netflix.

But seriously, though, I’ve gotten back into Destiny in a big way, and encountering problems with jumping into LFG groups and their associated Parties, changed from my custom privacy settings to the “more social” Adult defaults. Doing so has ensured I get about 15-20 random Friend requests, spam messages and creepy party invitations a day from accounts that clearly aren’t being driven by real humans.

Also, it’s me — I’m not that popular.

The image on the right? Just a small taste of said requests. That’s not counting the random game requests I get from [Adjective][Noun][Number] to play Rise of the Tomb Raider or Forza 6.

Hell, some of the spammers just want to talk; I don’t get a game request, simply an invitation to join a Party chat.

No thank you.

Worst, of course, are the text messages that are trying to sell me FIFA items or boost my gamerscore with a simple click and credit card purchase.

Back in February, Microsoft acknowledged that the Xbox Live network had been under attack in a big way, and promised easier reporting tools, but they don’t seem to be in place — or working.

Those asking about Xbox Live messages spam – we're working on it. But for now friends/my profile/privacy/custom and check friends only.

— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) February 6, 2015

To be perfectly honest, Ybarra’s response isn’t enough. I’m not about to stop what I’m doing — most likely a Destiny Strike — to report DodgyMonkey342 for the fifteenth time that day.

I’ve tried to be “more social” and that’s obviously not working. Time to go back into my cave, it seems…

Hopefully I can still LFG. Hopefully, I can still connect with fun Guardians and perhaps befriend them after a couple intense rounds of Challenge of Elders.

And, for the record, having to do this to avoid spam absolutely sucks. It’s not a proper solution, let alone the ideal one.

Is anyone else having the same problem on Xbox One? More importantly, what’s Microsoft actually going to do about it?

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