If you run into that person in Halo 3 who claims if they could have your LIVE ID name and password to recover your Xbox LIVE account to their Xbox and they’ll rank you up or find you all the hidden skulls in Halo 3, I urge you not to fall to temptation. While it may be appealing, in addition to violating the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use it can also result in you permanently losing your account. If that ‘friend’ of yours decides not return your account and buys a bunch of Arcade titles and movies on your account, there is nothing we can do except cancel the account since you willingly shared your information.”

Gamers will lose their Gamertag, Gamerscore, saved games and all the points they have on the account.

But there are other ways if you really want to get banned. Next on Hryb’s list are the cheats, or, as he calls them, “nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game”. At first, minor cheaters will kiss their entire Gamerscore goodbye. If they persist (or have done something much more serious), it’s goodbye Xbox Live altogether:

As you can imagine, we know how to find out if you do this and we do take action. And we’ll continue to do so.”

Is Microsoft just threatening or does the company really intend to turn Xbox Live into Xbox Dead for some people? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.