Animal Jam's Data Breach – What You Need to Know

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Are you wondering why you might not be able to log into your Animal Jam account right now?

Read on to figure out how to log back in...

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You might not be aware of this, because it's pretty recent news and AJHQ hasn't made it very public, but there was a data breach at WildWorks sometime in October and a few days ago, a whole lot of AJ account information was discovered to have been compromised.

Meaning, some hackers broke into one of WildWorks' databases and stole some user information, which they made public on an illegal hacking forum. 

Here's a segment from the notice AJHQ emailed out:

(Click here to read the full notice on the official Animal Jam website)

I know this is scary, but you don't have to panic. While there are some things you need to do to secure your account, which I will explain, it's not as bad as it could be. 

From what AJHQ shared in this notice, these are the parts of your Animal Jam account which may have been publicly shared on some illegal hacking forums.

– The email address for your parent account (but NOT the password for your parent account)

– Your username, connected to that parent account

– Your password, connected to your username (but encrypted-- meaning, hidden behind a code. This means it's harder for a hacker to figure out your password, but not impossible.)

– Your birthday (day, month, year)

– The full name associated with your parent account (your parent's name, for a lot of you)

– The billing address associated with your parent account (but NOT any credit card number or anything similar) 

While your Animal Jam username and password might have been made public, thankfully your parent account password was not, according to AJHQ. 

As a response to this, the reason why you might not be able to log in right now is because AJHQ changed your password for safety. 

If your information was part of the data breach, your username and (encrypted) password might have been floating around hacking forums for about a month now. While AJHQ only found out about this data breach a few days ago, the information was stolen sometime in October.

If your account was hacked sometime in the past month and you don't know why, this would explain it.

So, if you're like me and your password was changed by AJHQ, how do you get back into your account?

First, go to the Animal Jam homepage and click the Parents tab.

Next, click the Manage Online button.

Enter your parent email and the password of your parent account. Some of you might need to ask your parent if they remember this information. 

Because you might not use your parent dashboard much, probably a lot of you have forgotten the password for it. If this is the case, no worries– just click the "Forgot your password?" button right there and follow the instructions.

Once you finally end up in your dashboard, under the gear icon, click the Player Password: Update button. 

I really, really, REALLY recommend that you make a brand new password that is a lot more secure than your old one. 

This means your new password should:

– Be at least 8 characters long

– Be a random combination of capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols

– Ideally, not use any real words, or at least be a mostly random password.

I know, it's hard to remember a password that's mostly random, but it's the best way to keep your account safe.

If you know that no one else who plays AJ will be seeing it, you could probably get away with putting your new password on a sticky note on your computer. You could also hide it in a notebook.

Other than changing your password, there are a couple of other precautions you will want to take.

–  Make sure you don't use your Animal Jam password as a password for anything else, especially not the email account linked with your account. 

– In any case, change the password of your parent email account just to be safe.

– NEVER EVER EVER enter your password into anything other than the official Animal Jam website (or app). All sites/people that promise free membership/diamonds/items and ask for your login info are lying, and you can be 100% sure they just want to steal your items. 

If you believe that your AJ account was accessed illegally, you can contact support@animaljam.com or send them a help request on the official website and they can help secure it.

And if you have any questions or if you're struggling with anything, feel free to leave a comment here! I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

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So far, AJHQ has only made this data breach public on their official Instagram account and through emails sent to parent accounts. I can kind of understand that it would make people panic, so they wouldn't want to talk too much about it, but still– tons of players have had their passwords changed and don't know why. There are probably a lot of people freaking out right now.

So if you can, it would be great if you could spread the word about this so people know how to get back into their accounts!

That's all for now. Remember to enter in the Autumn den contest, and I'll be back soon with Part 2 of Spookytooth's Barn of Horrors! :)

See you in Jamaa~

*If you are tomboywolf and don't want your art in this post, let me know and I'll take it down! You're a great artist and I just thought it was fitting xD