Xbox Live requires a lot of personal info if you want to play online and purchase games. Your email address, payment info, game purchases, and more are all stored online. As such, protecting that information is vital, as there are hackers out there with poor intentions who want nothing more than to find out those details.
While you can’t control what they do, you can control what you do to secure your Xbox account. The unfortunate part of playing games on Xbox One is that Microsoft hasn’t actually done the best job of offering you ways to protect your info. In the era of two-factor authentication for your phone, Twitter, and even the Nintendo Switch, it would seem like a no-brainer to have this on Xbox as well, but that isn’t the case.
The only thing Microsoft helps you do is add security info to your Xbox Live profile. Start by heading to the Microsoft login page to access your account management settings on a web browser. If you are on Xbox One, go to your Settings and then Account. From there, log in and scroll down to the security section. Select to update the Security contact info option.
Here, you can add either an email address, phone number, or both to your account. We highly recommend that you do both to best protect yourself, but even one of them is better than none. Add a new email address different from the one you created the account with and a new private phone number you have easy access to.
You will receive instructions for verifying each new contact method that you set up on your email or phone, so complete that task and you will be good to go. These methods are used for recovering your account, notifying you of unauthorized changes, and quickly addressing any issues. Both are recommended in case you ever lose access to either of them.
That is the extent of what Microsoft lets you do for your account. The rest is up to you, so there are some precautions that you should make. For starters, make sure you have a strong password on Xbox Live that contains no obvious info like dates or locations. You should never share this password with anyone for any reason, and it should be different from other passwords like for your email.
It is also best that you avoid signing in on your Xbox account at public Wi-Fi locations that anyone has access to, like a school or cafe. Hackers frequent these locations to attack devices directly or steal private information like email, phone number, and credit card info, without you even knowing.
If someone ever does hack your account, be sure to change your password immediately to something entirely different and contact Microsoft support, if necessary. Double-check any email addresses and credit cards you have on your Xbox Live account to ensure they aren’t affected, too. Contact your bank if something looks unusual.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.