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Microsoft has a strict policy on rude names for their XBox Gamertags. If you call yourself Spanky McBumpants (you might want to jazz that up in your head a little), they’ll force you to change it to something a little more sensible. As a result, a kind of urban myth persists that if you want to change your name without paying for it (yes, they make you pay to change your gamertag under normal circumstances), you simply have all your friends report your non-offensive name as something spectacularly foul.

Ka-ching: free name change. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft are aware of this and they check first to see if you’re trying to scam the system.

What do you think some enterprising young chap has created to cash in on this – some sort of fake Gamertag Changer, perhaps?

Oh look:

Complaint program
Click to Enlarge

This doesn’t work, obviously – all they want is the Windows LIVE ID and associated password. While the program is keeping you busy with jibberish such as this…

The program has sent numerous complaints, please keep this application open for at least 2 minutes to allow it to register. The next time you login to xbox live it should ask you to change your gamertag :]

…the program is busy sending emails stuffed with juicy login details to the creator.

emailing your login

At this point, the only offensive thing about the victim will be the large and varied collection of swear words they fire out once they realise they’ve been had. Considering all the things you can use a Windows LIVE ID for, it isn’t really something you want to be handing over to Little Jimmy Hackpants.

VirusTotal scores are extremely low at this point – just 2/43. We detect this as Trojan-PWS.GamertagStealer.

Christopher Boyd