Xbox 360 users Identity at risk?

      Microsoft is investigating research from a team that suggests credit card information can be stolen from used Xbox 360 consoles even after they have been put back to factory settings.  The Xbox allows you to restore your xbox 360 to factory settings, which should erase all the content on the consoles hard drive, including credit card info, game saves, game demo's and gamertags.

But this research team says there were able to extract credit card numbers from  refurbished Xbox 360's using simple hacking methods.

       "Microsoft does a great job of protecting their proprietary information, but they don't do a great job of protecting the user's data," Drexel's Ashley Podhradsky tells the gaming site.

Microsoft has responded with...

     "Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console, and as such seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described," says Jim Alkove, general manager of security in Microsoft's interactive entertainment wing.

Alkove also says that the company wipes out local hard drives on all refurbished consoles before they are re-sold.

      All I know is that when I've talked to my local nerd friends at my friendly neighborhood game stop, they told me never put my credit card information onto my Xbox because our identities were at such risk from attack.  I even remember buying a hard drive from Game Crazy and it still had everything on it, Gamer-Tags, demo's, music..the whole works.  So, I haven't put my information on there and I suggest that you do the same.  Just got to the store, buy the microsoft points and save your self the future headech.