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EA Origin accounts are being stolen; change your password

ea-origin

EA Origin accounts are being highjacked and their passwords, associated email addresses or both changed. Users have been sent emails informing them that their details have been successfully updated – but unfortunately, they’ve been updated by someone else.

The emails forward users to EA support, who Eurogamer report didn’t know anything about the issue this morning. They’re now “escalating” the matter, however.

It’s become a regular inevitability of life on the internet, like a haircut. Change your password, change your name by deed poll, rip out your spinal chip and cast it to the wind to escape the hackers.

What’s less inevitable is the response some users have faced from EA support. Because hackers have changed their account date of birth – and despite holding plenty more in the way of personal identification – they’ve been unable to navigate EA’s security system. Their accounts therefore remain in the hands of the hackers.

VG247 spoke to a source locked out of his own account: “A paying customer loses access to all eight of his games on Origin – bought for over a hundred pounds – and has no way of getting them back because of EA’s ludicrous ‘security’ policies, while some hacker in Belarus gets to play them without being questioned at all.”

It’s a distressing situation, and the onus is on EA do everything they can to return accounts to their rightful owners. All we can do is change our passwords to something more sensible, spread the word, and sit tight.