PS5 Users Issued Important Warning Following Account Hack

There are a lot of unfortunate risks associated with being a user of the internet, and the number of scams and hacks we all need to be aware of seems to be increasing every day.

Whether it's not giving out our details over the telephone or email, or ensuring we have reached the right webpage before logging in, there's a lot of measures we need to take to ensure we hold on to our precious private information.

Over the last decade or so, that vigilance has also had to extend into the world of video games, as online purchases, private messaging and email support give nefarious actors new potential ways to trick us.

Now, a particularly tangential social engineering hack has been exposed, and it's one that PlayStation 5 players will absolutely want to be aware of.

PS5 User Hacked After Sharing Invoice Page

PlayStation

Over on Reddit, one PlayStation fan shared a PSA that a journalist at the French publication Numerama had seen their account hacked after sharing a transaction they had completed on the PlayStation Store online.

Essentially, the way the hacker did this was by speaking to PlayStation support over the phone and claiming their account had been stolen, following which they verified their identity using their PSN username and a transaction number from an old invoice.

The journalist then used the same method to get it back before the hacker once again locked them out of their account, within an hour, using the same method. All of the above happened despite 2FA being active on the account.

Despite what you may think of the decision to share the transaction page online in the first place, this feels like a major security breach, and one that Sony needs to address pretty quickly to get it sorted.

The comments below were glad the information had been shared, and were filled with warnings about keeping everything to yourself where possible.

"The point is, never share any account information or receipts for security reasons. I appreciate the various questions but think logically, hackers will use anything they can to take control of others accounts... Sometimes they sell or trade the other info for whatever it is they want. Why risk the possibility?" one user said.

Others mentioned similar issues with other platforms, with one saying, "Same thing with Steam - I lost access to my account (had 2FA switched on via their Authenticator app) and just had to provide an old invoice to customer support to regain access."

Though it's very unfortunate that this happened, hopefully the story stops anyone else from being caught out by naughty people.