How to protect yourself on XBL by Bastelyon
Tony Hynes, aka Bastelyon, of the Gamerscoreblog.com has a little piece on how to protect yourself from people online. To be truthful, this really evolves around the Xbox Live Vision Camera. It is a great new peripheral/accessory for the Xbox360 and can be very cool. You can do video chat with friends and family back home (I plan on doing it), as well as a new "controller" for games (read: Totemball), and for facial mapping to a character (ex. World Series Poker by Activision and Rainbow Six: Vegas).
There are ALOT of positives and new cool features that are coming out of the Xbox Live Vision camera. But, especially if you have little kids playing, you need to make sure that they, and yourself, are safe from any unneccessary and innappropriate occurances. Yes, I mean people flashing body parts to others.
Here is Tony's guide to keeping yourself and others safe from these incidents:
1. Block Communications – If you run into someone in online play that does something that you don’t like, you can quickly mute all communications, and you will no longer hear, or see anyone.
For example in UNO, click Start > Help & Options > Camera Settings > (Y) Disable Camera.
2. Set Communications to Friends Only – Within the privacy settings, you can change your preference to only communicate online with people on your Friends List. This means that only your friends voice and video will come through to you.
From the Dashboard, click your Gamer Profile > Edit Gamer Profile > Privacy Settings > Communications > Friends Only. You can also block all communications in the same menu.
3. File a Complaint – If you encounter someone that breaks the Xbox Live Code of Conduct, be sure to use the File Complaint system. All complaints are reviewed by Xbox Live (however, Xbox Live policy does not disclose the status or results of individual complaints). Trust me it works.
From a person's Gamer Profile: File Complaint > Complaint type > File Complaint.
You can read more of Tony's post here. He provides visuals to show you how to do everything.
As you may have noted, I have highlighted "File a Complaint". The first 2 steps, while good steps have two negative effects. You lose some features, and those who violate the Terms of Use, "get away. So, what I ask, is that everyone report these people right away as the incident happens. From what I hear...people ARE getting banned.