Monday, August 25, 2008

Caught stealing data/bandwidth from 1337pwn.com

We discovered that the other XBOX Live Friends application available in the AppStore is/was using our data feeds without permission. Their inefficient code contributed to usage spikes that affected our community experience. They were stealing a nice chunk of bandwidth and CPU through their improper use of our server interfaces. These folks were using our data without permission, authorization, or credit given. Not cool.

With a couple of tweaks to our data feed, we are now credited for the data within their application. Given that we have a sense of humor, we have also incorporated new features such as a random online status. This is all done to keep things interesting and give our hosting provider time to take the necessary steps. Of course, this feed fun will likely be short-lived as they find someone else to scrape.


1337pwn.com is the only official XBOX Live Community Developer Program member with an offering in the AppStore. We've been offering Friends List applications for nearly a year, investing a great deal of time and energy into our server infrastructure/coding. We will continue to work to make sure that our application offering is the best out there period.

UPDATE:
The creator of the other application acknowledged stealing data. Click here for more details.

Thank you for your support.
don't pwn alone(tm)