Nintendo Switch hack hits more users than expected: How to protect your account

Nintendo Switch Hacked
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo previously admitted that 160,000 Nintendo Accounts had gotten hacked and logged into without proper authorization, but now the company admits the number is far higher than it had initially thought. An additional 140,000 accounts have been broken into, bringing the number up to 300,000.

This might be a cause for concern for users with a Nintendo account, especially because these hackers reportedly took advantage of purchasing credentials and spent money on all sorts of in-game currencies.

The hackers obtained Nintendo Network IDs illegally and could have had access to a myriad of important information, including email addresses, dates of birth and selected countries. Nintendo originally promised to email the impacted users, so it's likely that they're going to do so once again for the additional victims.

To avoid such a panic in the future, it's recommended that you enable two-factor authentication for your Nintendo Account by going to the companies official support page. It's also recommended that you check your attached PayPal accounts and credit card statements to ensure you haven't been charged for something you never purchased.

If you're genuinely fearful about the state of your account and whether or not it has been broken into, you can check where and when someone might've logged in. To do this, head to the website accounts.nintendo.com and select "Sign-in History" within the "Sign-in and Security Settings" options menu. Here, it should provide you with the relevant information. 

Nintendo will show which country the device signed in from, which operating system it was using, which browser it was using, and the exact time and date in which the sign-in occurred. If everything looks accurate to when you last signed in, then there should be no problem.

Claire Tabari
Contributing Writer

Self-described art critic and unabashedly pretentious, Claire finds joy in impassioned ramblings about her closeness to video games. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism & Media Studies from Brooklyn College and five years of experience in entertainment journalism. Claire is a stalwart defender of the importance found in subjectivity and spends most days overwhelmed with excitement for the past, present and future of gaming. When she isn't writing or playing Dark Souls, she can be found eating chicken fettuccine alfredo and watching anime.