As a result of a data breach that is purported to have occurred in late 2015, gamers are only just now learning that 2.5 million accounts at the forums of “The ISO Zone” – a site mainly used to distributed pirated copies of games and software used with console emulators, have been hacked and possibly, personal information that they have used on those accounts stolen.

The ISO Zone may not be place where transactions primarily take place, but the trail that users leave behind in their data, things like the e-mail addresses and passwords they use for their accounts, to their general traffic on the site, could be used to defraud them sometime in the future. Many who have their data stolen in data breaches, and have used the same e-mail address and password on multiple sites, often find themselves needing to modify their credentials on a great deal of other sites to provide some protection in hindsight.

Stolen account information, be it financial, personal or otherwise, is often sold on what’s known as the “Dark web”, a shady part of the internet that can only be accessed using a proxy service called Tor; there, stolen information, and even child pornography, is distributed. You don’t want people like that to get ahold of your data.

It is advisable to vary your e-mail addresses and if not, then at least your passwords, if you use multiple sites for daily activities. In addition, of course, although this seems to be a server-side data breach, run regular virus and spyware scans to ensure that you, too, have not fallen victim to locally-installed spyware without your knowledge.

A little commonsense often goes a long way in staying safe on the web!

Martin Mann
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