Over the last few weeks we’ve been made aware of reports that high-profile player accounts are being targeted for takeover. Through our initial investigation we can confirm that a number of accounts have been compromised via phishing techniques. Utilizing threats and other “social engineering” methods, individuals acting maliciously were able to exploit human error within our customer experience team and bypass two-factor authentication to gain access to other player accounts.

At this time, we estimate that less than 50 accounts have been taken over using this method. We are currently working to identify rightful account owners to restore access to their accounts, and the content within, and players affected should expect a response from our team shortly. Our investigation is ongoing as we thoroughly examine every claim of a suspicious email change request and report of a compromised account.

There is always a human factor to account security and we know we must do better. As a result of these incidents and our investigation, we have taken the following actions to increase the administrative and technical safeguards for EA Accounts:

• All EA Advisors and individuals who assist with service of EA Accounts are receiving individualized re-training and additional team training, with a specific emphasis on account security practices and the phishing techniques used in this particular instance.
• We are implementing additional steps to the account ownership verification process, such as mandatory managerial approval for all email change requests.
• Our customer experience software will be updated to better identify suspicious activity, flag at-risk accounts, and further limit the potential for human error in the account update process.

While in some cases these changes could impact customer experience wait times, these are necessary additional steps to ensure our player accounts remain secure.

We’d like to apologize for the inconvenience and frustration that this has caused, and that we were unable to share additional details in our original communication last week as we conducted a thorough investigation. Thanks to the whole community for your patience as we continue to address the situation and take corrective actions.