Words with Friends has been hacked according to a new report. The details state that this potentially compromises the data of around 218 million users.
If you’ve played the game before, you may want to take precautions and keep an eye on your information. If you feel like being extra diligent then changing up your passwords would be the first thing to do.
Current and past players should also know that this is said to only impact anyone who installed and played the game before September 2. If you don’t fit into that category, I.E. you installed the game after that date, then you should be fine.
Zynga has acknowledged that Words With Friends was hacked
Zynga has already acknowledged that the game was hacked. So, it’s not trying to necessarily hide the situation until a much later date. This should be somewhat of a relief to all players as a lot of times companies don’t report major breaches like this until well after the fact.
That being said, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of an exact date of when the hack was discovered. Zynga only mentions that it “recently discovered” the hack.
The good news is that it doesn’t seem like any financial information was accessed. What was accessed though does includes names, email addresses, login IDs, and hashed passwords, SHA1 with salt.
There is also some other information that was reportedly accessed if ever given, such as phone numbers, password reset tokens, Facebook IDs if connected and Zynga account IDs. Basically, users should watch their accounts and possibly change any associated passwords just to be safe.
What players should do preemptively
As noted already, Zynga is recommending that players change their passwords as soon as possible. This should go for anything that was directly linked to the game, just in case.
Zynga has also mentioned that it has already taken precautions to protect user accounts from invalid logins. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t change your passwords, but it is extra protection, and that’s a good thing.
Zynga doesn’t mention it specifically, but the report highlight Words With Friends only and not Words With Friends 2. It isn’t entirely clear if those who played the second game and not the first are impacted in the same way, but it would be safer to assume that they are and take the same precautions.
In addition to Words with Friends, Zynga is also the publishing company behind popular games such as Farmville, and any other games in that series, as well as many other mobile and social network games.