DraftKings recommends password safety after unauthorized account access reported

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Online sports betting operator DraftKings acknowledged on Monday that a “small number” of betting accounts were accessed by unauthorized users over the weekend, leading to roughly $300,000 in customer funds being withdrawn.

On Monday, DraftKings sent out a statement:

"DraftKings is aware that some customers are experiencing irregular activity with their accounts. We currently believe that the login information of these customers was compromised on other websites and then used to access their DraftKings accounts where they used the same login information," Paul Liberman, DraftKings co-founder, said.

"We have seen no evidence that DraftKings’ systems were breached to obtain this information. We have identified less than $300,000 of customer funds that were affected, and we intend to make whole any customer that was impacted.

"We strongly encourage customers to use unique passwords for DraftKings and all other sites, and we strongly recommend that customers do not share their passwords with anyone, including third party sites for the purposes of tracking betting information on DraftKings and other betting apps."

Multiple DraftKings users confirmed to VSiN on Monday that money had been withdrawn from their account and they couldn’t log back in because the phone number associated with the account had been changed.

Ryan Butler – a journalist at iGaming Next who covers the gaming industry — tweeted on Monday that his DraftKings account had been hacked and that there was a hacking attempt on his FanDuel account. FanDuel hadn’t responded for comment at the time of publication.

Action Network was the first to report issues for DraftKings users on Sunday. Action Network also tweeted earlier on Sunday that “BetSync with DraftKings is currently unavailable due to changes made by the sportsbook. Our team is actively working to get BetSync back up and running. Thank you for your patience.”