Following the news that Minecraft has been hacked http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/20/minecraft-players-email-passwords-leak-online , Jonathan French, security analyst, AppRiver explains the impact of this on customers:
“This is a pretty small release of passwords compared to most. But at the moment, no one seems to be taking claim of it and there’s no information on how it was obtained. It could have been a hack, but it could have also been phishing. It’s hard to tell at this point. As with any login out there, people should be using unique passwords and cases like this just re-enforce that. If someone uses the same password everywhere, all it takes is one leak to possibly compromise a lot of things.
“Specifically with gaming this can bring up another point. Many users, I’d say a large majority, use the same usernames online as well. With gaming as popular as it is online, you can usually Google someone’s username in a game and get an idea of other games they play as well from statistic trackers and forums. So in the case of someone reusing usernames and passwords, this can be a huge impact on them by just one game getting compromised.”