More than 1800 Minecraft user names and passwords were published online earlier this week, according to German publication Hesse, which in reality is almost entirely non-noteworthy as security breaches go; this is, after all, a game that recently broke the one million concurrent user mark. Even so, Mojang wants everyone to know that this is not a tip-of-the-iceberg situation—It hasn’t actually been hacked—and also to remind its many players to be careful about how they handle their passwords.
Mojang’s Owen Hill explained in a recent blog post that the accounts were compromised not by hackers, but as the result of phishing scams by unnamed “bad people.” All compromised passwords have been reset, and Mojang has sent out emails to everyone affected—and if you didn’t receive such an email, then there’s nothing to worry about.
“No-one has gained access to the Mojang mainframe,” Hill wrote. “Even if they did, we store your passwords in a super encrypted format. Honestly, you don’t need to panic.”
Hill also urged players to never provide their login information to non-Mojang sites, and to use different passwords on different sites to minimize the potential damage of actual security breaches. And if, after all that, you’re still a little nervous about the whole thing and want to change your password anyway—”You sound like a sensible one,” Hill wrote—you may do so here.