It appears Nintendo Switch accounts are being hacked if social media reports are to be believed from this weekend.
Over the last few days, owners of the hybrid handheld console and its Lite brethren have come out on social platforms and appear to be reporting a spate of logins across the platform that might very well be something to worry about. A report from user “pixelpar” seems to be the highest-profile jumping-off point for these reports with a tweet where they advised that their account had been logged into multiple times.
I suspect Nintendo may have had a major security breach. My account was accessed numerous times overnight.
My password is a unique string and my PC is definitely clean (not that I ever login via it).
Lots of similar reports on Reddit/twitter.
Unlink PayPal & enable 2FA folks!
— Pixelpar (@pixelpar) April 19, 2020
Following on from this, replies across Twitter and Reddit seem to suggest that this isn’t the only instance of Nintendo account compromises. Over the last month, it appears that even Nintendo Japan has admitted that there has been a significant increase in suspect activity. The tweet below confirms that there has been a substantial increase in the number of reports of third parties logging into users’ NintendoAccounts and illegally making purchases. You might need to get google translate out for it, however.
4月に入り「ニンテンドーアカウントに不正にログインされ、クレジットカードが不正に使用された」というお問い合わせが増加しております。
不正ログイン対策には、#二段階認証 が有効です。安全のため設定されることをおすすめします。
設定方法はこちらをご覧ください。 https://t.co/ww4J3CkOae
— 任天堂サポート (@nintendo_cs) April 7, 2020
It is generally accepted among many security circles that since the lockdown, the digital world has seen
an uptick in nefarious activity such as DDOSing, zoom meeting bombing, and account compromises such as this. Whether it’s simple boredom or an attempt to prey on late joiners to the Animal Crossing craze is debatable. Either way, you can help secure your Nintendo Switch account and any payment methods by adding 2-factor authentication to an account, because the harder an account is to hack, the more likely somebody will pick another target. For instructions on setting up two-factor authentication on a Nintendo Account, Sign-in and security settings, then scroll down to 2-Step Verification. Once there, the remainder of the required steps can be found over at the official Nintendo support site, get locked down, stay safe, and make sure you don’t end up with a hacked Nintendo account.
