Back in April, Nintendo began investigating an increase in unauthorized access attempts on people’s Nintendo Accounts. Some players were receiving emails of unauthorized access attempts while others had their accounts breached. Nintendo estimated that around 160,000 accounts might have been compromised. It also stated that hackers would not have had access to actual credit card information, however, they would have been able to see email addresses, countries/regions linked to Nintendo Network ID’s, and dates of birth. After two months of investigation, Nintendo has confirmed that another 140,000 accounts may have been compromised.
According to the Japanese Nintendo Support Page, an additional 140,000 accounts were compromised. This means that up to 300,000 NNID’s may have been compromised. Gamers everywhere can relax, however, as Nintendo has stated that “Less than 1% of all NNIDs around the world that may have been illegally logged in may have actually been fraudulently traded through their Nintendo account.” They then assure customers that they are “…still in the process of refunding in each country, but we have already finished refunding for most customers.”
While the means through which accounts have been breached has been discovered, it is still currently unknown how the Nintendo Network ID information was obtained. Nintendo UK‘s support page has stated that “…there is currently no evidence pointing towards breach of Nintendo’s databases, servers or services.” They have also stated that because of the breach, Nintendo is “discontinuing the ability to use a Nintendo Network ID to sign in to a Nintendo Account.” Players will still be able to use all other means of logging back onto their accounts, however, until the breach issue is fully resolved, Nintendo highly recommends that all Nintendo Switch Users set up two-step verification for their Nintendo Accounts and follow the Nintendo Account Recovery Process if they have received any emails regarding unauthorized attempts being made to their accounts.