Nintendo: NNID hack affected more accounts than previously thought

I previously wrote about how there had been a breach of unauthorised third-party logins on several Nintendo accounts, where their payment details have been used to purchase digital items from Nintendo’s eShop. It seems like the hack was worse than what Nintendo initially stated.

Nintendo previously said in April that 160,000 accounts were broken into, and that login IDs and passwords had been obtained illegally. There were also a lot of Tweets that mentioned the ‘hackers’ used the stolen money for the game ‘Fortnite’.

Now, Nintendo revealed that 300,000 Nintendo Network ID (NNID) accounts were broken into—140,000 more accounts affected than previously thought. Nintendo also says that accounts may have been broken into if users had the same password on both their NNID and Nintendo account.

In response to the breach, Nintendo eliminated the option for Switch owners to log into their Nintendo account via NNID. The company is also encouraging all Switch owners to enable two-step verification to secure their accounts, and the 300,000 accounts affected by the hacking attempts will receive password resets via email.

I’ve already written a detailed how-to regarding the two-step verification, which you can read here. However, the short story is that you can enable the two-step verification by going to the Nintendo Account site and find the option there after you’ve signed in. You can see what it will look like in the screen shot above.

“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused and concern to our customers and related parties,” Nintendo said in a statement. “In the future, we will strive to further strengthen security and ensure safety so that similar events do not occur.”

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