PlayStation Japan has warned users to activate two-step verification, after reports of hijacked accounts.
The Ask PlayStation Japan Twitter account (translation: Google Translate) tweets that they recently “received many inquiries from customers whose accounts have been hijacked.” As such, they recommend users activate two-step verification prevent such issues. You can find the guide on how to set up two-step verification here.
No such warning has come from the western branches of PlayStation at this time of writing. The situation bears comparison to a situation in April 2020. Nintendo of Japan urged its users to use two-step verification, after “the number of inquiries stating that ‘You have been unauthorizedly logged into your Nintendo Account and your credit card has been illegally used’ has been increasing.”
Western users then stated that their Nintendo accounts had been illicitly accessed from places such as Iraq, Poland, and Chile. Linked Paypal accounts were then used to buy $100 USD worth of V-Bucks for Fortnite.
However, there had been no confirmation on the issue from Nintendo in the west. Both the official US and European Nintendo Twitter accounts tweeted on April 9th about two-step verification, and the US news feed on the Nintendo Switch console also discussed two-step verification. None of these expressed a sense of urgency.
While the issue may be limited to just PlayStation Japan users, we encourage our readers to generally take the appropriate measures to ensure their online accounts are safe.