Nintendo Issues Statement on Huge Privacy Breach, Disables One Sign-In Option

Nintendo confirmed this week that a significant breach of privacy regarding users’ accounts has [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Nintendo confirmed this week that a significant breach of privacy regarding users' accounts has taken place recently with Nintendo saying that thousands of accounts have been affected by the breach. A statement issued by Nintendo through its various regional accounts said that there'd been "recent incidents of unauthorized" wherein users noticed suspicious sign-ins and other problems with their accounts, some of which included unauthorized purchases. As Nintendo investigates the problem, it's disabled the ability to sign into a user account using the Nintendo Network ID for the time being, though there was no indication given of when this option may return.

Nintendo Japan's support site first published a post about the problem which said there'd been approximately 160,000 accounts affected by the security breach. Nicknames, birthdays, and email addresses are among the pieces of personal information which may have been obtained by those behind the unauthorized logins. Nintendo also confirmed that the breach of security appears to have been going on since the beginning of April, a timeframe which begs the question of why users weren't notified earlier even after people reported problems with their accounts.

A similar statement shared on Nintendo's support site for the Americas said there's currently no indication that Nintendo's databases, servers, or services had been breached.

"While we continue to investigate, we would like to reassure users that there is currently no evidence pointing toward a breach of Nintendo's databases, servers or services," Nintendo said. "As one action in our ongoing investigation, we are discontinuing the ability to use a Nintendo Network ID to sign in to a Nintendo Account. All other options to sign in to a Nintendo Account remain available."

Nintendo further encouraged people to consider resetting their passwords on their accounts to make sure that there are no further problems while the situation is being investigated. Two-step authentication is another privacy measure which Nintendo recommended its users look into if they haven't already got that set up.

Nintendo closed its message by apologizing for any inconveniences which may have affected users and said it'd be sharing more information on the matter as the investigation continues.

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