Achievement Unlock Time Stamp Questions

Horizon - Xbox
1

Investigating whether or not I want to use Horizon and its Achievement Unlocker feature, but pretty nervous doing it:

  1. Microsoft still checking 360 profile data?
    On a youTube video I was looking at for instructions on how to use Horizon has in it’s updated comments:
    “They are no longer running their Xbox 360 service for checking accounts.” and “they stopped around the end of 2018”.
    People ARE still getting reset & banned in 2020 for editing 360 accounts tho right?
    Did Microsoft really stop investigations & checking of 360 profiles for hacked achievements?
    What is the most recent evidence of someone getting caught and reset/banned?
    This comment might be confused with them quietly ending support for 360-specifc Customer Service requests, but wondering why some are saying this.

  2. Time Stamps - include or not?
    I’ve seen a lot of back & forth about whether one should have a time stamp on their achievements or not. Obviously, if you are doing online required achievements, it’s a must. It seems to me that one should probably have a time stamp regardless, because it looks less questionable to the public (also my OCD would kill me not seeing a date). But does the act of adding a time stamp make it more visible to Microsoft that your account has something modified?

  3. Time Stamp data - milliseconds
    I saw in a Horizon build update patch notes that the achievement unlocker get improved to apply a millisecond unit to time stamps (other programs that unlock achievements that are still available still do not I believe). Otherwise, your time stamp will have an ending time .000. The timing window of unlocking an achievement exactly on .000 is very suspect, especially if you have 5+ all with the exact same time stamp down to the milisecond. A dead giveaway that you hacked your score. I believe this is how many got caught (or get caught if they are still checking) by Microsoft in the past. At least, it’s a big warning sign that draws undesirable attention.
    Apparently the police on TrueAchievements used scripts and such to display other player’s time stamps when viewing their profile on xboc.com, but a redesign around 2014 or so stopped this from working. They used this as a sanity check to invalidate an account’s achievement list on their site, and also as evidence to report players to Microsoft for cheating.
    This could be why Horizon was updated to include them.
    If interested:
    https://www.trueachievements.com/gamerblogcomment.aspx?gamerblogid=26464

  4. Time Stamp Data - PC Time to “rewind time”
    I haven’t seen this specifically answered in here, but asking if it’s possible to make an achievement look like it was unlocked in the past, like during a time when a game’s online servers were still active. This way it would ‘look like’ you unlocked it legitimately.
    I saw someone suggest setting your PC time to the date/time you want the time stamp to display as. If any one has done this, how does it resolve?
    When you put your profile back onto your console and let it sync to the servers to make the achievement “Stick”, does it set that achievement with the past date, and sort them correctly based on that date as though you earned it back then? Is this behavior high risk for getting your account reset/banned?? But if they truly aren’t checking anymore, maybe not?

  5. Option unlock only specific achievements as opposed to all at once
    Most of the How-to videos just unlock all achievements on a game’s list all at once. Can you pick only specific achievements to unlock, one at a time? I would prefer to only unlock online only MP achievements, and then earn the single player ones legit. Also, this might be necessary to make the time stamp different so you don’t unlock them all on the exact same time stamp, which for online achievements you don’t often unlock more than one at a time.
    So ideally, I’d unlock each MP achievement, with a different hour, minute, & millisecond time stamp, and leave the rest locked.

Basically, I want to unlock all of the Batman: Arkham Origins online achievements, and ONLY those 11. The servers are possibly down for good (but annoying still up for PlayStation I hear), but I wanted to time stamp them to a time when they were still up (otherwise it would draw attention). So assessing the risk of doing this and the chances of getting reset/banned.
I’ve had this account since 2006, and would destroy me if I lost it. But my OCD would go CRAZY never being able to get the full 100%, which is why it’s not in my Player Games list. So investigating…

Thanks for any insight.

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Yes

Yes for online achievements

Milliseconds are randomized and have been for years

You can manually set a timestamp

Yes

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Wow, quick and to the point response thanks!
I just discovered this site about a month or so ago, so a lot of this is all new to me (hence the question about milliseconds), and it seems like it’s easy to miss a very important step/hint with all of this that could result in unrecoverable disaster. Does the Achievement Unlocker show the milliseconds it assigns to the time stamp after you initiate the unlock?

In general how ‘risky’ is achievement unlocking these days as long as one does it “smart” (don’t get too greedy, make sure online only achievements have a time stamp, stagger the time stamps across multiple achievements, do them in the “correct order”, etc.)? Still nervous I’d do some step to either permanently break my profile or accidentally draw attention to Micorsoft, even after following the above common sense guidelines.
I know hard to now for sure, seems like it’s a somewhat low risk if done smartly, especially since most player and Microsoft resources have moved on from 360 in recent times. That was why I asked what are some of the most recent examples of people getting reset/banned.

Wonder why some would put out there that “they stopped checking 360”? Maybe it’s an abscense of evidence, in that in the past year or so there are not many instances of players getting reset/banned. Also, there are MUCH less total 360 players still, so there are just less people doing it nowadays than during it’s heyday. All things to think about.

Thanks again.

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I honestly don’t remember and don’t have a profile to check with anymore.

Pretty much the same that it always was. Within reason, it is extremely low. I know some people unlocked 50k-60k at a time and never had issues but I unlocked 10k once and got reset.

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when you “got reset” what happened?
When was this?
You did all 10K at once?
How did you get notified you got caught; did they say anything?
Did just those achievements get reset, or did your entire profile get wiped to 0, still showing all of those games played but all with 0?
And were you prevented from ever getting those achievements again?
“Don’t have a profile to check” = you just stopped using it and don’t play Xbox games anymore, or this reset result event made it unusable?

All I’d attempt is trying to unlock like 11 total achievements in one game with the date set back to some time when the servers were consistently available.

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Way back when I unlocked about 15 thousand and got caught. Yepp reset to 0 cant get achievements on that game anymore except for DLC after it came out , and got the cheater badge
And after all this time it still says cheater
Actually both me and my nephew did it same time and both got caught
Oh ya and banned from xbox live for 30 days too
And dont play xbox 360 anymore. Main goal here are trainers for PC now.

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Uhh probably like 9 years ago. Yes you go back to 0 and can’t unlock any of the achievements ever again. You just get an email that says they’ve taken action against your account and if you continue you will be banned. I don’t have an xbox anymore so I can’t check.

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