Thousands of Disney+ customers have had their accounts stolen and sold in hacking forums; a recent report revealed. And because of this, it is a good time to protect your account in case that it isn’t hacked yet, and let increase the security and protection of it
We believe that most of the accounts were accessed using a basic code-breaking application, which cycles through a list of common password combinations until they find one that fits. The hackers then proceed to change the email address and password, before passing the accounts on.
Others says that most of the users are reusing the same email and passwords from other websites which personal information such as email addresses, password, DOB, etc, are in the hands of hackers and luckily gained access to those Disney + accounts.
What is the Disney advice in this case? They recommend using a unique password that combines numbers, special characters and symbols with a min of 8 characters long. This will make harder for the cracking tools to decipher the password.
But in this case it is supposed that the service may have a multi-factor authentication, so in case that I try to access from an unknown location, the systems can alert me and ask me a SMS to confirm that it is the real owner of the account that is trying to have access to the service.
How to change your Disney+ password
Have you set a password? Here’s how to change your Disney+ password:
- Go to www.disneyplus.com/account.
- Select Change Password.
- Input your existing password.
- Enter your new password.
- Press Save.
Warning: If your computer / laptop has been compromised by a keylogger, changing your password will not make a difference as the virus will catch the new credential the next time you type it. If you suspect this is the case (i.e. a number of your accounts have been hacked), run a virus scanner.
How to change your Disney+ email address
You’ll need also to change your email address to something a little different. There are a number of ways you can do this, but the easiest is to add a ‘+‘ to the end of your existing email address, followed by a phrase unique to Disney+. For example, [email protected].
This will forward all email sent to this email address to your existing email address. In our case, this would be [email protected] (note: not all email providers support this feature — the alternative is to create a new email address or set up an alias).
The intention here is to make it harder for hackers to figure out the email associated with your Disney+ account. Most will assume it’s your default email address, which may be listed in a huge list of emails they’re working through, so modifying it reduces the risk of them obtaining access.
Here’s how to change your Disney+ email address:
- Head over to www.disneyplus.com/account.
- Select Change Email.
- Enter the new email address.
- Input your password.
- Press Save.
What to do if your Disney+ account has been hacked
The first thing you’re going to want to do if your Disney+ account has been hacked is to contact Disney with the date you registered for the service, the last time you had access, the original email address, and the type of payment method (Visa Debit, for example) on file. They may be able to restore it.
Failing this, we recommend reaching out to your bank or credit card provider and explaining to them what happened. They may be able to refund the money you paid for the account ($7 for a one-month membership, $13 for the Disney+ Bundle, or $70 for access to Disney+ for an entire year).