For some, managing virtual marijuana dispensaries, building amusement parks, defeating dragons, and online battles royales are excellent stress relievers. From what we know, over the past two years, there has been plenty of stress to relieve and more spare time on our hands in which to reveal our long-forgotten interests.
Recent findings hint that from the first to the second quarter of 2020, there was a 30% increase in online gaming traffic. Online gaming has even surpassed movies and music in terms of total revenue spent on entertainment. But as we all know, it’s not all fun and games. In 2020 so far, almost 2 billion breached records have been commercialized on various dark web markets and forums.
It seems that modern hackers have found their new cash cow – they’re now selling stolen gaming accounts to obtain millions of dollars in returns each year. The multitude of stolen accounts are then split up into transferable sizes, only to provide resources for credential stuffing attempts designed to pinpoint valid accounts over different products.
Cybersecurity experts have researched the black market for the buying and selling of stolen Fortnite credentials only to find that thousands of accounts stolen in bulk can sell from anywhere around $10,000 and $40,000. It seems that Fortnite developer Epic Games does struggle to prevent credential stuffing by reducing the number of account checks, a common tactic used by hackers to steal credentials. Epic Games reduces these checks by limiting the number of logins per IP address. However, the latest reports show that hackers have found a way to evade these extra security steps using more expensive proxy services. Fortunately, any gamer can utilize several data privacy tips and strategies to hack-proof their game accounts and protect their credentials.
Gamer security tips
Data breach legal professionals from LegalExpert.co.uk advise gamers who are competitive and invest a lot of real money into their characters and skins to be especially vigilant and follow these important cybersecurity tips to protect their online accounts.
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Keep personal information for yourself
It’s common for online gamers to use variations of their birthdates and names in their public usernames. Keep your real name and birthdate for yourself, and don’t use them in your user name. For instance, if your name is John and your birth year is 1994, you should avoid using John94 or another variation of the name as your username. Try using a nickname and a combination of random numbers instead.
What’s more, you should also avoid revealing personal credentials like birthdate, phone number, or places you regularly visit on stream or chats. Prowling malicious intenders can easily father these personal data to impersonate you.
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Choose a secure password
In theory, most gamers know how to do this, but in practice. It’s just much easier to recycle the same password that you use for nearly every online account – until, obviously, the person who steals your gaming credentials can now access your email, social media, and bank account.
And because you already know all the reasons you need a strong, impossible-to-guess password for your accounts, take this friendly reminder and finally upgrade your old password from password1234. Of course, having to use many different accounts, each having an entirely different password you need to memorize, is close to ridiculous. But fear not – you can always use a password manager and store each individual login securely, so you only have to remember one key password to access them all.
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Two-Factor authentication is a must
The two-factor authentication requires game platform users to input a code from a text or app message every time they attempt to log in. They can also use their fingerprints to authorize the login, which is by far the best way to maintain their privacy on different gaming hardware, though it’s slightly inconvenient.
You can also turn off the screenshots or share options for certain games depending on how much you trust your team, but this will not help avoid malware downloads and phishing issues.
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Firewall – always a viable option
The simplest thing you can do to protect yourself from malicious intenders while gaming online is to enable the firewall on your PC.
If you have connectivity issues when gaming, it could mean that you’ve disabled your firewall completely. However, it’s considered a smart move to allow that particular game client or video game through the firewall. By doing so, you will provide unlimited internet access to the video game while not compromising on any other safety features of the Windows Firewall.
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Configure your router properly
Configuring your router doesn’t just guarantee a smooth online gaming experience – a well-configured router will also provide some additional security measures that will help protect your PC from online threats.
After doing some extensive research, you may think that configuring your wireless network encryption will interfere with your online gaming experience, but not as you may think.
If you’re having problems such as lar or jitter, disabling your router’s security features for a marginally better gaming experience is not an option unless you want to risk your online security.
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External cheat tools – still not an option
Competitive gamers like to win so much that they turn to cheat software in order to provide their in-game character with god-like abilities and powerful ammo. But many cheat tools are peppered with malware and ask you to turn off your antivirus application during their installation.
Gamers who resort to such applications don’t just ruin other players’ gaming experience but also compromise their own security. Cybercriminals are leveraging these apps to steal valuable credentials like card information and passwords and may even use your PC for mining cryptocurrency. Why risk all that when you can use a guide or walkthrough website to improve your game.
At the end of the day….
As long as you’re wary and mindful of all the segments we listed here, you don’t need to worry about online data protection. After all, hackers will continue to exist so it’s up to you to reduce the potential risks.
