Billy Tolley swings a Microsoft Kinect around an abandoned room in sudden, jittery movements. “Whoa!” he says. “Dude, it was so creepy.” On the display, we see an anomaly of arrows, spheres, and red lines that disappears almost as soon as it arrives. For Tolley and Zak Bagans, two members of the Ghost Adventures YouTube channel, this is enough to suggest they should leave the building. Because for this team and other similar enthusiasts, that seemingly innocuous blotter of white arrows means something more terrifying: a glimpse at specters and phantoms invisible to the human eye.
Technology
Ghosts in the Kinect
Fifteen years after its release, just about the only people still buying the Microsoft Kinect are ghost hunters like Tolley and Bagans. Though the body-tracking camera, which was discontinued in 2017, started as a gaming peripheral, it also enjoyed a spirited afterlife outside of video games. But in 2025, its most notable application is helping paranormal investigators, like the Ghost Adventures team, in their attempts at documenting the afterlife.
The Kinect’s ability to convert the data from its body-tracking sensors into an on-screen skeletal dummy delights these investigators, who allege the figures it shows in empty space are, in fact, skeletons of the spooky, scary variety. Looking at it in use — the Kinect is particularly popular with ghost-hunting YouTubers — it’s certainly producing results, showing human-like figures where there are none. The question is: why?
With the help of ghost hunters and those familiar with how the Kinect actually works, The Verge set out to understand why the perhaps most misbegotten gaming peripheral has gained such a strong foothold in the search for the paranormal.
Part of the reason is purely technical. “The Kinect’s popularity as a depth camera for ghost hunting stems from its ability to detect depth and create stick-figure representations of humanoid shapes, making it easier to identify potential human-like forms, even if faint or translucent,” says Sam Ashford, founder of ghost-hunting equipment store SpiritShack.
This is made possible by the first-generation Kinect’s structured light system. By projecting a grid of infrared dots into an environment — even a dark one — and reading the resulting pattern, the Kinect can detect deformations in the projection and, through a machine-learning algorithm, discern human limbs within those deformations. The Kinect then converts that data into a visual representation of a stick figure, which, in its previous life, was pumped back into games like Dance Central and Kinect Sports.
The Kinect isn’t always seeing what it thinks it is
When it was released in 2010, the first-gen Kinect was cutting-edge technology: a high-powered, robust, and lightweight depth camera that condensed what would usually retail upward of $6,000 into a $150 peripheral. Today, you can find a Kinect on eBay for around $20. Ghost hunters, however, typically mount it to a carry handle and a tablet and upsell it for around $400-600, rebranded as a “structured light sensor” (SLS) camera. “The user will direct the camera to a certain point of the room where they believe activity to be present,” says Andy Bailey, founder of a gear shop for ghost hunters called Infraready. “The subject area will be absent of human beings. However, the camera will often calculate and display the presence of a skeletal image.”
Though this is often touted as proof we’re all bound for an eternity haunting aging hotels and abandoned prisons, Bailey urges caution, telling would-be ghost hunters that the cameras are best paired with other equipment to “provide an additional layer of supporting evidence.” For this, Ghost Hunters Equipment, the retail arm of haunted tour operator Ghost Augustine recommends that “EMF readings, temperature, baseline readings, and all of that are essential when considering authentication of paranormal activity.”
That’s because the Kinect isn’t always seeing what it thinks it is. But what is it actually seeing? Did Microsoft, while trying to break into a motion-control market monopolized by the Nintendo Wii, accidentally create a conduit through which we might glimpse the afterlife? Sadly, no.
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The Kinect is actually a straightforward piece of hardware. It is trained to recognize the human body, and assumes that it’s always looking at one — because that’s what it’s designed to do. Whatever you show it, whether human or humanoid or something entirely different, it will try and discern human anatomy. If the Kinect is not 100 percent sure of its position, it might even look like the figure it displays is moving. “We may recognise the face of Jesus in a piece of toast or an elephant in a rock formation,” says Jon Wood, a science performer who has a show devoted to examining ghost hunting equipment. “Our brains are trying to make sense of the randomness.” The Kinect does much the same, except it cannot overrule its hunches.
That suits ghost hunters just fine, of course: the Kinect’s habit of finding human shapes where there are none is a crowd-pleaser. The Kinect, deployed in dark rooms bathed in infrared light from cameras and torches, wobbling in the hands of excitable ghost hunters as it tries to read a precise grid of infrared points, is almost guaranteed to show them what they want to see.
Much of ghost hunting depends on ambiguity. If you’re searching for proof of something, be it the afterlife or not, logic suggests you’d want tools that can provide the clearest results, the better to cement the veracity of that proof. Ghost hunters, however, prefer technology that will produce results of any kind: murky recordings on 2000s voice recorders that might be mistaken for voices, low-resolution videos haunted by shadowy artifacts, and any cheap equipment that can call into question the existence of dust (sorry, spirit orbs) — bonus points if battery life is temperamental.
“I’ve watched ghost hunters use two different devices for measuring electromagnetic fields (EMF),” Wood says. “One would be an accurate and expensive Trifled TF2, that never moves unless it actually encounters an electrical field. The other would be a £15 [$18], no-brand, ‘KII’ device with five lights that go berserk when someone so much as sneezes. Which one was more popular, do you think?”
Glitches aren’t tolerated — they’re encouraged
Given the notoriously unreliable skeletal tracking of the Kinect — most non-gaming applications bypass the Kinect’s default SDKs, preferring to process its raw data by other, less error-prone, means — it would be stranger if it didn’t see figures every time it’s deployed. But that’s the point. Like so much technology ghost hunters use, the Kinect’s flaws aren’t bugs or glitches. They’re not tolerated — they’re encouraged.
“If a person pays good money to enjoy a ghost hunt, what are they after?” Wood asks. “They prime themselves for a ‘spooky encounter’ and open up to the suggestion of anything being ‘evidence of a ghost’ — they want to find a ghost, so they make sure they do.”
If it were just the skeletal tracking that ghost hunters were after, better options are now possible with a simple color image. But improved methodology wouldn’t return the false-positives that maintain belief, and so skeletal tracking from 2010 is preferred. None of this is likely to move the needle for those who believe towards something more skeptical. But we do know why the Kinect (or SLS) returns the results it does, and we know it’s not ghosts.
That said, even if its results are erroneous, maybe the Kinect’s new lease on afterlife isn’t a bad thing. Much as ghosts supposedly patrol the same paths over and over until interrupted by ghost hunters, perhaps it’s fitting that the Kinect will continue forevermore to track human bodies — even if the bodies aren’t really there.
Five months after returning to OpenAI, Barret Zoph — the company’s head of enterprise AI sales — has departed, The Verge has learned.
Zoph returned to OpenAI in mid-January after a stint as co-founder and CTO of Thinking Machines Lab, the competing AI company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. Shortly after Zoph returned to OpenAI, the company said he would lead its push into enterprise — a significant role at OpenAI, since in recent months it had vowed to stop chasing so-called “side quests” and focus on key revenue drivers like enterprise and coding ahead of its planned IPO.
OpenAI confirmed to The Verge that Zoph will be departing. He posted a goodbye message in the company’s Slack channels. Zoph did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zoph originally left OpenAI in the fall of 2024 for Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, but departed the role abruptly in January 2026 after reports of alleged misconduct involving an undisclosed relationship with a colleague. Murati posted on X in January that Thinking Machines Lab had “parted ways” with Zoph and that he would be replaced as CTO.
Thinking Machines Lab has its own tensions with OpenAI. Murati briefly took over as CEO from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during his November 2023 ouster, and during the recent OpenAI trial, Murati testified that she couldn’t trust everything Altman said. In September 2024, when Murati left OpenAI to start Thinking Machines Lab, a group of OpenAI employees followed shortly after. But three of them — including Zoph — all returned to OpenAI together this past January. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, wrote on X at the time that she was “excited to welcome Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz back” and that the decision had “been in the works for several weeks.”
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For years, two women in Bremerton, Washington, opened credit cards and lines of credit in other people’s names, working from documents they pulled out of stolen mail. Emily Vranic and Heather Marquis redirected the new accounts’ statements to an address they controlled, so no bill ever reached the victims. They pleaded guilty in federal court this month to bank fraud and aggravated identity theft in a scheme prosecutors say stole nearly $229,000 from banks and bank customers.
If you have ever worried about a credit card opened in your name, this case shows how quickly stolen mail can turn into a much bigger identity theft problem. Opening a new account is the leading form of identity misuse reported to the Identity Theft Resource Center. In its latest data, 62.1% of attempted misuse cases began with a new account application rather than the takeover of an account the victim already held.
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WARNING SIGNS YOUR MAIL HAS BEEN FRAUDULENTLY REDIRECTED
A credit card opened in your name can start with stolen mail, exposed personal details or documents pulled from the trash. (Nastasic/Getty Images)
How stolen mail helped thieves open credit cards
When people picture an account opened in their name, they may imagine a checking account at a bank they have never set foot in. The more likely target is a credit card. Credit cards made up 41% of attempted account misuse reported to the ITRC last year. Checking accounts came to 17.7% and personal loans to 8.5%.
A credit card is one of the easier accounts to open in someone else’s name, and the reason is in how the application is cleared. A lender matches the submitted name, date of birth, address and Social Security number (SSN) against the bureau file. When those details fit a record that already exists, an automated system can approve the application with no one confirming that the applicant is the person being described. Assemble enough of someone’s information from breaches and stolen mail, and the check clears.
Why identity thieves rarely stop at one account
Vranic and Marquis did not stop at one account per victim. Once they controlled someone’s identity, they activated existing cards, opened new credit lines and moved money out of bank accounts tied to the same name.
This is common. The ITRC found that 25.6% of victims are now handling two or more identity incidents at once, up from 23.5% the year before. The same stolen details, including name, date of birth, address and SSN, can open the next account as easily as the first.
DON’T LET THIS CREDIT CARD FRAUD NIGHTMARE HAPPEN TO YOU
A fraudulent credit card may stay hidden for weeks if statements and notices are sent to an address controlled by the thief. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Why weeks can pass before you learn about the account
A new account does not announce itself. It reaches your credit report only after the first statement closes, which puts the first record 30 to 60 days behind the opening. Banks report to the bureaus monthly, and the bureaus need up to two weeks more to post the change.
The first paper notice goes wherever the application is listed. Vranic and Marquis had the statements mailed to their own address, not the victims’. When the mail reaches the right house, it may read like a routine offer or a card no one ordered, which makes it easy to set aside.
By the time a denied loan or a collections call makes the account impossible to ignore, it has been open and drawing money for weeks.
WHY THAT $4 CHARGE ON YOUR STATEMENT COULD BE FRAUD
Freezing your credit, watching for new accounts and acting quickly can help limit the damage if your identity is used. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
What to do if a credit card appears in your name
Move quickly, because every day an account stays open gives a thief more time to spend money, damage your credit or try the same information somewhere else.
1) Contact the card issuer immediately
Call the credit card company or lender that opened the account and tell them the account is fraudulent. Ask them to close or freeze the account, stop any pending charges and send written confirmation that you are not responsible for the debt.
2) Start at IdentityTheft.gov
Go to IdentityTheft.gov. The Federal Trade Commission’s site generates an Identity Theft Report and recovery plan to help you report identity theft, limit the damage and fix your credit.
3) File a police report if a creditor asks for one
Your FTC Identity Theft Report is usually the key document for disputing fraudulent accounts. Some lenders, banks or debt collectors may also ask for a police report. If that happens, file one with your local police department and keep a copy for your records.
4) Save every document and confirmation number
Keep copies of account statements, collection letters, emails, dispute letters, FTC reports, police reports and confirmation numbers. A clear paper trail can make it easier to prove the account was fraudulent if a creditor, credit bureau or debt collector questions your claim.
5) Dispute the account in writing
Dispute the fraudulent account directly with the lender that opened it, in writing. Also dispute it with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion if it appears on your credit reports. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, companies that furnish information to credit bureaus have a duty to investigate disputed information.
6) Freeze your credit at all three bureaus
Place a freeze at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to help block the next application. Freezes have been free since 2018 and can be lifted online when you need to apply for credit.
7) Add a fraud alert
A credit freeze blocks access to your credit file. A fraud alert tells lenders to take extra steps to verify your identity before opening new credit in your name. You only need to contact one of the three major credit bureaus to place a fraud alert, and that bureau must notify the other two.
8) Report suspected mail theft
If you believe stolen mail helped someone open the account, report it to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service. You can report mail theft, identity theft, fraudulent change-of-address requests, fraudulent mail holds and fake Informed Delivery accounts at mailtheft.uspis.gov.
9) Request an IRS Identity Protection PIN
If your Social Security number was used, request an IRS Identity Protection PIN at irs.gov/ippin. This helps keep a thief from filing a tax return in your name.
10) Change passwords and lock down your accounts
Change the passwords on your bank, credit card and email accounts, especially if your email address was part of the fraud. Use a password manager to create and store strong, unique passwords for each account, so one exposed password cannot unlock the rest of your financial life. Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) where available. Then review recent transactions, saved payment methods and automatic payments for anything you do not recognize.
11) Get help cleaning up the damage
Cleaning up identity theft can mean dealing with creditors, credit bureaus, debt collectors and repeat follow-ups. Keep copies of every report, dispute letter, confirmation number and account closure notice so you have a clear paper trail if the fraud resurfaces.
No service can prevent every account opened in your name. Continuous three-bureau credit monitoring may alert you to new accounts as they are reported, rather than weeks later when a lender turns you down or a collections notice arrives. See my tips and best picks on Best Identity Theft Protection at Cyberguy.com
Kurt’s key takeaways
A stolen credit card account can quietly grow into a much bigger identity theft mess before you ever see a bill. That is what makes this Washington case so alarming. The victims were not ignoring warning signs. The statements were being sent somewhere else. The best move is to make it harder for thieves to open the next account. Freeze your credit at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, watch for hard inquiries and check your credit reports for accounts you do not recognize. If something appears, go straight to IdentityTheft.gov, file a report and dispute the account in writing with the lender. Credit monitoring can also give you a faster heads-up when a new account or inquiry hits your file. It will not stop every scam, but it can shorten the time between the fraud starting and you finding out.
Have you ever found a credit card, loan or account on your credit report that you did not open? Let us know how you discovered it and what it took to fix it by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
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Valve has some good news and bad news about Steam Controllers. The good news: if you make a reservation for a Steam Controller, the company will now show you one of three estimates of when you’ll be able to actually order your gamepad: by September 2026, by December 2026, or sometime in 2027. The bad news: any reservations made today “indicate a 2027 date for shipping,” Valve says.
“We have no plans to stop making Steam Controller,” according to Valve. “But as we look at the current demand compared to how many we know we can make by the end of the year, we want to manage expectations as much as we can with regards to when folks can expect to receive their order.”
Valve’s very good new Steam Controller went on sale in early May, and the initial rush led some people to run into frustrating problems with trying to check out ahead of the controllers eventually going out of stock. A few days later, the company announced that it would be implementing a reservations queue for interested buyers so they could get on a waitlist. If you’re on the waitlist, when you get notified that a Steam Controller is ready for you to buy, you have 72 hours to actually make the order.
“When we launched Steam Controller last month, we quickly saw that initial demand exceeded our expectations,” Valve says. “Switching to a reservation queue has (hopefully) cut down on the headaches on the customer side, and for us it’s also been helpful as we plan ahead and try to get as many out as quickly as we are able.”
All three of Valve’s big hardware products were delayed from a planned early 2026 launch because of the component crisis, Valve still hasn’t announced when the Steam Machine PC or Steam Frame VR headset might go on sale. However, just yesterday, Valve officially launched its big SteamOS 3.8 update with support for the Steam Machine. It’s also been importing a lot of hardware into the US as of late.
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