EA in the news once again for FIFA accounts being compromised

Four years ago there was an epidemic of account thievery related to the FIFA series and its Ultimate Team mode. Many described it at the time as “hackings” but really it was social engineering and a major failure in EA’s customer service where inexperienced reps transferred accounts without properly verifying ownership.

Since that time EA Sports has put into place numerous layers of account security which has certainly helped. However in a report today from BBC News, it appears the same issues are coming back to the surface.

Some heavily invested Ultimate Team players, being targeted because of their known stature or possibly leaderboard rankings, have lost control of their accounts. The report singles out some high-profile Youtubers but it’s not isolated to just them. Thieves know their accounts will have lots of coins and highly desirable valuable cards so that’s what they’re going after.

When money is on the line people are going to look for ways to steal. Unfortunately EA still seems to be struggling with the concept of social engineering. It’s unclear how much of the fault should be on the users for not utilizing every available protection measure, but clearly EA has more work to do to eliminate this problem.