EA Leaks User's Private Info Via FIFA 20

It wasn’t all that long ago that the ESA – the Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry’s lobbying arm and the folks who run E3 – got into hot water for basically doxxing all the journalists who had the great ‘fortune’ of covering their trade shows in years past. Basically, they stored all these journalists' private information on an unsecured web page, and refused to take action until someone just released all the information to the public – IE, it was too late.

So clearly the gaming industry’s cybersecurity needs some work, a fact that’s been reinforced by the news that EA also has something of a leak problem: specifically, in that people who try to sign up for the FIFA 20 Global Series noticed that, when they were prompted to enter their personal information, there was already information in the field: someone else's.

So people were randomly seeing the email addresses and birth dates of random other players.

This particular problem has been forwarded to EA, who is now, at least, aware of the issue and has recently tweeted that they’re going to fix it ASAP.

We're aware of a potential issue affecting the registration page for the EA SPORTS FIFA 20 Global Series that went live earlier today. We take these matters seriously, and we immediately took down the page while we investigate the matter. We'll share updates as soon as possible.

As gaffes go, this one actually isn’t that huge: a leaked email address and birthday could help someone, in theory, make a fake account in someone’s name, or possibly get into their social media accounts if they have really bad passwords, but the issue seems more or less contained and small-scale. Not as bad as the ESAs monstrous eff-up, but hopefully EA’s still going to take responsibility for those affected by it.