BREAKING: Twitch Potentially Hacked; Users Require New Passwords

Uh-oh! Twitch announced a few hours ago that there “may have been unauthorized access to some Twitch user account information”, which resulted in the game streaming service resetting all its users’ passwords for security reasons. 

Specifically, Twitch has emailed users telling them that the compromised information may include the following:

• Twitch username and associated email address;
• Password (which was cryptographically protected);
• The last IP address the user logged in from.

Other information, such as first and last name, phone number, address and date of birth may also have been leaked, if that was provided to Twitch in the first place.

Twitch has also announced that it will contact affected users directly once it has determined the extent of the breach. However, it has taken the precautionary steps of disabling accounts and severing the link between Twitch and YouTube. 

What this means is that next time users log into Twitch, they’ll have to select a new password. They may also be required to reconnect their Twitch account to their YouTube account.

This is not the first time that Twitch has had a security problem. In 2013, the site was shut down amid claims that users were logging in and gaining access to the wrong accounts, but it denied at the time that it was hacked. Twitch also went down for several hours last week, but the company spokesperson referred to it as an “internal tech issue”.

Twitch’s popularity as a video site led to Amazon spending $970 million last year to purchase the company.