What is Neopets, you ask? It is a virtual pet website that gives members the ability to “own, raise, and play games with their virtual pets.” According to BleepingComputer, Neopets has experienced a data breach which has exposed the data of up to 69 million Neopets users. That is not an issue when you own, raise and play games with a real pet!

BleepingComputer reports that a hacker “known as ‘TarTarX’ began selling the source code and database for the Neopets.com website for four bitcoins…” The hacker alleged that “sensitive personal information, including birth dates, countries, IP’s genders and names as well as almost 69M unique email addresses” had been stolen from Neopets’ website.

Neopets has confirmed the incident and is working with forensic investigators and law enforcement. Neopets suggests that users change their passwords and is updating its users about the incident on Twitter. However, it appears that changing your password may not be enough in this instance. This is a good reminder to be wary of downloading apps in the first place, checking the apps’ history of security incidents and deleting apps when they are no longer needed or being used [view related post].