Origin/EA Accounts - Check your security question(s)

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KNAPPO
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Origin/EA Accounts - Check your security question(s)

Post by KNAPPO »

Check your accounts lads.

I had my security question changed to Russian somehow, only spotted it when setting up 2 step authentication on my account.
The account's password, email address ect were all un touched and no PayPal transactions were messed with. I have 2 step authentication on my Google and PayPal accounts so nothing fired off to give me a hint that something was up. As I said, I only spotted it when setting up 2 step on the EA account which silly me didnt do when I purchased Battlefield 1. Ive had the account since 2011 but it was pretty much dormant till about a month ago and it must have only been compromised a week or two ago.

I had to ring up EA this morning to get full control back which was a pleasant experience. I was expecting a shit show but the bloke on the other end had me all sorted out in under 5 mins and verified that nothing but the security question was tampered with.

All good now but after a bit of Googling last night this seems to be a pretty common thing with EA accounts getting their security question changed to Russian. Worth a look if you have an EA/Origin account.
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Re: Origin/EA Accounts - Check your security question(s)

Post by Dr. Pain »

Thanks for the reminder. :yes: Mine was all good as I did change my Origin account when I got Battlefront2 but I badly needed to redo paypal as I use it a lot.
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Re: Origin/EA Accounts - Check your security question(s)

Post by ysu »

That sounds weird enough - so the account is not hacked itself (why would they leave the email addy alone, then) yet the questions are changed...

That seems to indicate that either the backend is hacked somewhere (eg the DB server storing the questions, and it's stored separate from the credentials)
or a simple technical mistake.
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KNAPPO
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Re: Origin/EA Accounts - Check your security question(s)

Post by KNAPPO »

ysu wrote:That sounds weird enough - so the account is not hacked itself (why would they leave the email addy alone, then) yet the questions are changed...

That seems to indicate that either the backend is hacked somewhere (eg the DB server storing the questions, and it's stored separate from the credentials)
or a simple technical mistake.
Yeah it had me stumped why the question was changed yet the email and password was untouched.

The bloke from EA account security mentioned it could have been done via a bot and it looks from my searching online that this happens a bit with Origin/EA.
^ Some of those search results go back to 2015 - 2016!
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