Xbox Party Chat security is being improved to protect IP addresses

Xbox has been quietly working to improve the security of Xbox Party Chat after and eliminate the risk of denial-of-service attacks. 

The news comes after a user on the Xbox One subreddit warned others not to accept random party invites, noting that "some players can DDOS your network through this using your IP address if you join."

Xbox engineer Bill Ridmann joined the discussion to explain that the issue is actively being worked on, and that peer-to-peer (P2P) voice connections for parties are actively being phased out. 

"We know this is a problem -- we are actually phasing out P2P voice connections for party chat completely which we've been working on quite a bit in the background to stop this very problem," said Ridman. 

"We've been ramping up a larger percentage of parties to be completely server based week over week (so you don't make direct connections to other party members so they can not see your IP) and soon should have no more P2P based parties.

Ridmann added that parties joined via the Xbox mobile app have always been server based, so there has never been a risk of a user's phone IP being exposed.