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[pluto2]

I only have one profile on my 360 which is a live profile. I use it when playing backups offline, but also when going onto live to check out demos, arcade games etc (though never playing backups online). Would it be considered safer to use a separate "offline profile" when playing backups offline, that hasn't been linked to live?

Of course this would also lead to inconvenience whenever I'd like to play online with the original as I wouldn't have the correct gamerscore etc.

Maybe it's a stupid question, personally I can't see what the difference would be, but I thought that I would ask for your opinions.

[pluto2]

*bump* was the question that stupid?

[scuba156]

the thing is that no one can tell you with any proof or any certainty. it would only be a guess

[pluto2]

yeah, that regards everything about flashing. What I was looking for was more like if there is a discussion about this, if it's considered relevant or not, what people generally think about it.

Haven't had much feedback anywhere about this, either nobody thought about it before or it's just considered irrelevant.

[Shod]

I read a post on a forum somewhere (afterdawn? cant remember for sure) where a guy was discussing Microsoft banning people playing their copies of Halo 3 that Argos were selling a week before the actual release date (due to admin errors - remember that?).

Anyway, as he said Microsoft were going to ban ANYONE playing Halo 3 (wether it was legit or not) offline as when next time they logged on they would get the persons recent playlists (with times / dates etc), scan them for Halo 3, and if seen before the release date, bye bye see ya later sort of thing.

Now this guy seems to think that he made a new gamer profile on his `box which he played Halo 3 with whilst his network cable was unplugged, and which he deleted (and cleared his cache) before he went back online with his normal profile. He reckons that worked for him and he`s still OK on live etc.

So im guessing this is a similar thing to what your askin, and PLEASE dont take it as concrete cos im only repeating what someone else wrote (for all I know he was taking the piss). But if your asking for thoughts on it then theres one for ya!

Personally, I dont think it would matter wether you deleted the profile or not as they ban the BOX, not the profile. So if you have a box with 2 profiles on and have been banned using one of them, you still cant use the other can you? The whole box is banned so that says to me that they record info on the whole thing, not just per profile. But I may be wrong, anyone got anything better to add?!?

[pluto2]

Interesting. Though creating a new profile every time a backup is played offline and afterwards deleting it and the cache EACH and EVERY time seems like a commitment not worth investing in. Also, this would mean you can never do any saves in games which would to most games render them useless. So it seems here the options available that are "sane" is: A) use the same profile w backups offline as you use online or haved a separate profile for offline backups that you never use online.

Why I started thinking about this whole thing is because of the fact that the achievements etc gets transferred onto live when you log in, even from offline gaming. On an offline profile though, this would probably not happen, at least not until you make it a live profile. This doesn't say it makes it safer, in fact, one would think that m$ would have thought about this, but since the offline profile isn't used on live perhaps they wouldn't pay as much as attention to it? This is just speculation of course! Wouldn't it be nice if we had a nice little leak inside the m$ team? at the very least I'd be thrilled to know how they work and how skilled the people are that actually find the ways to detect backups etc.

Any other thoughts on this issue would be interesting, how do you do it? same profile or sepearate?

[Havok]

Profiles have nothing to do with anything.  All the current evidience point to bad backups being the sole cause of banning.

The Halo 3 thing that Shod wrote about was a false rumor.  No one was banned for playing it early.

[pluto2]

Yeah I know all current evidence points to this, I was more looking for a discussion about whatever using an offline profile could improve the general safety, not just for today, but for the future aswell as we can never know what will come next. I know it isn't a question that can be answered in that sense, I was more looking for comments about how likely it is that this would/ever could have any effect. From what I understand though nobody/very few has really thought about it or can't see any value in it so I guess I'll just rest my case and use the same profile like everyone else (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Havok]

QUOTE(pluto2 @ Feb 19 2008, 05:59 AM)

Yeah I know all current evidence points to this, I was more looking for a discussion about whatever using an offline profile could improve the general safety, not just for today, but for the future aswell as we can never know what will come next. I know it isn't a question that can be answered in that sense, I was more looking for comments about how likely it is that this would/ever could have any effect. From what I understand though nobody/very few has really thought about it or can't see any value in it so I guess I'll just rest my case and use the same profile like everyone else

Its been thought about... MS bans consoles NOT profiles.  If MS detects anything bad they ban the whole console..

[pluto2]

Yeah I just figured that less data might be sent to live by using an offline profile, but guess that's not the case.

[Havok]

QUOTE(pluto2 @ Feb 19 2008, 03:05 PM)

Yeah I just figured that less data might be sent to live by using an offline profile, but guess that's not the case.

I guess its possible if you make the mental leap that Microsoft is doing offline logging...  

So far no one has seen any evidence that that happens either..

[pluto2]

Speculation is all we have (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Either way, since it seems like nobody else uses offline profiles, I can't see why I would do it either. It does indeed add problems if the desire arise to play the original online.

[Shod]

QUOTE(Havok @ Feb 19 2008, 09:16 AM)

The Halo 3 thing that Shod wrote about was a false rumor.  No one was banned for playing it early.

Thats prob why he thought it worked then...

It was here I saw it anyway if anyone wants a look, I think the post about profiles was in the forum there.

Halo 3 users get banned!

[WTFudge]

QUOTE(Shod @ Feb 20 2008, 11:59 PM)

Thats prob why he thought it worked then...

It was here I saw it anyway if anyone wants a look, I think the post about profiles was in the forum there.

Halo 3 users get banned!

Thats bullshit anyways , lots of people played it before retail and didn't get banned . MS customer service reps aren't exactly the smartest .

[Shod]

QUOTE(WTFudge @ Feb 22 2008, 12:48 PM)

MS customer service reps aren't exactly the smartest .

You can say that again  

If you phoned up 5 diff times askin the same question I bet you get at least 3 different answers, and 2 that can't give you ANY answer!

I tried the amazing e-mail support a couple of times - both replies were "Please ring Microsoft customer support on ....(whatever the no. is)"... If I wanted to spend an hour on the phone Id of done that to start with.