Customer service announcement
Filed under: consumer, customer service, customers, email, GameArena
Dear customers,
Last night we reset the passwords of some of our GameArena and Games Shop service members after the sites were victims of a hacking attack.
If you are an affected GameArena and Games Shop service member your new password is in the process of being sent to you in an email from the BigPond Games team. As a precaution you should also change your password at any other sites where it may have been used.
To clarify, Telstra BigPond Broadband account password details have not been affected.
If you haven’t yet received an email with your new password but want to change your password, please go to the password reset page on the GameArena website.
Importantly for members to note, no financial or credit card details were kept on the sites so information of this kind has not been accessed.
Information that might have been obtained was limited to GameArena or Games Shop usernames, the email address used to join the site and the encrypted GameArena and Games Shop passwords of up to 35,000 members, however as a precaution Telstra has reset passwords for up to 230,000 GameArena and Games Shop members who access the site using a non-BigPond email address (e.g. Hotmail or Gmail).
My sincere apologies to all members that have been impacted, unfortunately these attacks are possible even with the most stringent security measures in place. I’d like to take this opportunity to reassure all our customers we have rigorous measures in place to protect your information at all times.
We’ll continue to investigate this matter to understand it further and take steps to prevent a recurrence.
Related links:
It seems that Telstra is having a bad run regarding security. Somewhat concerning for Australia’s largest Telco. Could it be due to outsourcing a lot of the core functions that used to be done safely in Australia?
Actually, my understanding is that this is the first incident in a long time and I might remind you that Telstra is not alone… Many of the biggest companies in the world – Sony and Google being the most obvious examples in recent times – have been compromised in one way or another.
Whilst I don’t know the specifics (not that I’d tell you if I did!), my understanding is that even (Australian) Department of Defence computers are attacked, dozens of times a day in fact!
I could even go one better and point out that some of America’s “strongest” networks – including that of the CIA and the (American) Department of Defence) – have been compromised in highly-publicized attacks, too!
The point of all this?
Yes one would hope that Telstra is doing everything in their power to prevent this and yes the fact that Telstra is outsourcing most of their business overseas is an absolute joke (though I doubt this has little, if anything to do with their security), but the issue is not limited to Telstra and it would be unrealistic if one was to not expect far larger attacks in the future, from far larger companies and organizations…
“Mobile based bundles. It’s a great idea. I understand why it is important as I have mentioned in a previous post and am currently discussing with our marketing team to see how we might include this in our future plans.”
I you understand you need to do it before we all leave.