Stick to the following game principles: don’t stand in the fire, always heal your tank and use multi-factor authentication to protect all your profiles.
I used to call myself a gamer. I’ve been streaming on Twitch; I’ve watched all the OpTic Gaming videos on YouTube and I don’t even want to think about how much GFuel I’ve used. But was he really a player? After all, my accounts (all of which are now deleted) were never hacked, a rarity in the heady days of 2014 when it seemed like online gaming accounts were protected by little more than a password and a prayer.
I’ve been lucky, but let’s face it, I’ve also been terrible at Call of Duty, League of Legends, Smash, and the few esports I’ve tried. My accounts just weren’t worth much to other players back then. In the current landscape, all gaming accounts are a mine of personal information for enterprising hackers in both the gaming community and the broader online criminal communities.
What’s In A Name
Think of all the information you put into a gaming account, whether it’s your account or your kids’. Only your username, player tag or identifier can contain valuable data such as B. your birth year or common nicknames. Hackers can use this type of personally identifiable information (PII) to locate you on data broker websites and use this information to guess your web login passwords.
I recently spoke to Rob Shavell, a privacy expert at Abine’s DeleteMe, an online personal data removal service, about identity theft in the online gaming community. He said that hackers are now a well-known part of online gambling and players of all ages need to take steps to protect their identities. Shavell explained: “Today, games have become children’s bank accounts. They spend their time depositing their pocket money and their parents’ money. There is also a group of people who have some basic hacking skills. Add to this the proliferation of online dating and there is plenty of information and incentives for hackers to take over accounts.
Online Gaming
Data broker websites contain a lot of personal information beyond a name and phone number, and this data can be used against you. Shavell said: “Some of these data brokers now have information about the car you drive and the amount of money you spent on your home and where you were educated. Your mother’s maiden name, your exact date of birth. These are things that a lot of us use when creating passwords. Even if your passwords are strong, these details could still be used as a security challenge to log into some websites.
If you think that stealing gaming accounts is just the menial work of angry fellow players or kids committing petty scams, think again. Hacking game accounts is a lucrative business in some corners of the internet, and personal information is a cheap commodity. Shavell said that automation is key to the hacking process, noting, “There are tools that hackers can use to collect all this data and then try different setups on different gaming platforms. The sophistication they bring to these hackers has increased.” They’ve written software that takes on the Dark Web and makes it easy.”
Hackers don’t even need to guess the right password combinations every time to make big bucks from their crimes. Shavell said, “You don’t have to be successful more than half the time to get a really good deal. Sometimes a hundred or a thousand attempts and suddenly many accounts are getting results.” taken out.”
How To Avoid Online Game Hacks
So what can you do if you are a gamer or a gamer’s parent? The key to security is multi-factor authentication and currently using an authenticator app is the best method that is safe, convenient and free.
Here at Webmagpro, we’re big proponents of multi-factor authentication in all its forms, whether implemented with the aforementioned authentication apps or a hardware security key.
Proper password protection is also a must. Each week I ask my readers to use a password manager, and I’ll continue until more readers stop using the same passwords for multiple logins. Even if you think your repeated password is unique, why risk a hacker getting it right once? There are some decent free password managers out there (although my beloved Myki is gone). Pick one and get a chance to fight criminals online.
You should also consider examining your fingerprint. Have you googled yourself recently? You will be surprised by all the information you will find, especially if you are active on social media or play online games.
If you see a large amount of your personal information online, you should consider investing in a data removal service like Delete Me or IDX Privacy, which have a similar data removal component. Data erasure services send erasure requests on your behalf to all manner of data broker sites year-round so you don’t have to. Of course, you can always do the work yourself for free. Abine created a step-by-step guide to defeating data aggregators.
If you want to take your online security to the next level, you also need to be careful about what you share across all online platforms. Fighting data brokers is just one step in protecting online privacy. Webmagpro Eric Griffith has written a handy guide to disappearing from the internet completely.
Also Read: How to Stay Safe Online: The Essential Guide to Cybersecurity
