Lord of the Rings Online data breach
From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated
This article is about the August 2013 breach of Lord of the Rings Online. For every breach, see Breaches.
The Lord of the Rings Online data breach exposed 1,141,278 accounts from lotro.com in August 2013. The data taken includes passwords, usernames, dates of birth and email addresses and 2 more kinds of data.[1]
Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 12 Mar 2016, 3 years later. It is the 397th largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.
What was exposed
Lord of the Rings Online’s breach included 6 kinds of data. What each lets criminals do:
| Data | What it’s used for |
|---|---|
| Passwords | Criminals try leaked passwords on email, banking and shopping sites, because people reuse them. |
| Usernames | Half of a login. With a reused password, it opens other accounts. |
| Dates of birth | Used to prove who you are to banks and phone companies. |
| Email addresses | Expect scam emails that name the company to look genuine. |
| IP addresses | Roughly where you were when you used the service. |
| Website activity | Personal details that make scam messages more convincing. |
What to do
- Check whether you’re in it.Search your email address on Have I Been Pwned. It tells you which breaches it appears in, Lord of the Rings Online among them, without showing the data.
- Change your Lord of the Rings Online password.If the account still exists, sign in at Lord of the Rings Online (lotro.com) and change it.
- Change it anywhere you used the same one.Start with your email, then banking and shopping. Leaked passwords are tried on other sites automatically, within days.
- Use a password manager and two-step sign-in.A different password for every site means one breach can’t open the rest. Two-step sign-in stops a leaked password working on its own.
- Distrust messages that mention Lord of the Rings Online.Scammers use breach data to sound genuine. Don’t click links in emails or texts about the breach; go to the site yourself.
Timeline
- : the breach, as best it can be dated.
- : Have I Been Pwned verifies the data and adds it to its search, 3 years later.
Breaches often stay hidden for a long time. Until it came out, people in it had no reason to change anything.
Similar breaches
Breaches that leaked the same kinds of data, closest in time:
- Neopets, May 2013, 27 million accounts
- BookCrossing, November 2012, 1.6 million accounts
- Malwarebytes, November 2014, 111,623 accounts
- Sony, June 2011, 37,103 accounts
- Yam, June 2013, 13 million accounts
- Funimation, July 2016, 2.5 million accounts
See Breaches for all 618, and Updates for keeping your devices patched.
References
- ^ Troy Hunt. “Lord of the Rings Online”, Have I Been Pwned, added 12 Mar 2016. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.
External links
- Have I Been Pwned, to check your email address
- lotro.com, Lord of the Rings Online’s website