Thousands of Disney+ accounts already hacked: What to do

Reviewing Disney Plus — (Image credit: Future)

Disney+ became available less than a week ago, yet thousands of hijacked accounts are already being offered for sale in cybercriminal marketplaces, and many users are reporting Disney+ account takeovers on social media, according to ZDNet.

Yet it's not that Disney+ has been hacked. Far from it. Rather, it's likely that the bulk of the account takeovers stem from password reuse, i.e. account owners using passwords already used for other accounts. (You should never reuse a password.)

Disney could have spared itself this public-relations mess had it let its users set up two-factor authentication (2FA), which would make it much harder for crooks to hijack accounts even with correct passwords.

How to protect your Disney+ account

Until Disney changes its mind about 2FA, your Disney+ account is going to be a sitting duck for hackers.

Make sure your Disney+ password is strong -- at least 12 characters long with a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols -- and unique, not used anywhere else.

If you get an email, social-media message or text message saying your Disney+ account is in danger, don't click any links in the message. Instead, open a new browser tab and manually log into Disney+ that way.

To help both keep track of your passwords and create strong new ones, you should be using one of the best password managers.

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Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random TV news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.