Words with Friends is a popular mobile game that many people play with their peers. Unfortunately, a recent data breach compromised the account information of over 200 million users.
Zynga Data Breach
The developers of popular mobile games Words With Friends and Draw Something recently announced that it discovered a cyber attack that affected millions of the games' players. Evidently, the attack happened last September when hackers accessed a database with the information of both iOS and Android players who installed the game before Sept. 2.
All in all, hackers accessed data on 218 million player accounts which include their names, email addresses, login details, Facebook IDs, and others. As such, players of the games are advised to change their passwords on other apps or websites that use the same password as the ones in their Zynga account, and are reminded not to give their user names and passwords to anyone as Zynga will never ask for users’ login information.
Ongoing Investigation
A hacker going by the name Gnosticplayers is claiming the responsibility for the data breach, and Zynga has already notified law enforcement. While investigations are still ongoing, Zynga is already taking steps to protect user accounts from invalid log-ins, and is notifying account holders whose accounts might have been accessed by the hackers.
That said, Zynga notes that there is so far no evidence that any financial information or Facebook passwords were accessed. Still, even if there is no evidence that a player’s account has been breached, experts say it would still be wise to change passwords or perhaps even to delete their Zynga accounts if they are no longer playing the games. Players can also request for their data held by Zynga to be deleted, but the process may take 30 days to complete.
“The security of our player data is extremely important to us,” Zynga notes. ”We have worked hard to address this matter and remain committed to supporting our community."
