These are not the best of times to be a gamer who leaves personal information on websites. In addition to the Sony troubles of the past couple months, British game publisher Codemasters has been hacked, leaving emails, addresses and passwords exposed.

Joystiq reports Codemasters informed victims of the breach via email. The hacker is believed to have accessed the information by exploiting a code redemption page for the racing game Dirt 3. The publisher, which insists that payment information was not exposed, took the site down and will relaunch it later this year.

From the letter:

Members’ names, usernames, screen names, email addresses, date of birth, encrypted passwords, newsletter preferences, any biographies entered by users, details of last site activity, IP addresses and Xbox Live Gamertags are all believed to have been compromised.

Whilst we do not have confirmation that any of this data was actually downloaded onto an external device, we have to assume that, as access was gained, all of these details were compromised and/or stolen.

How have you changed the way you handle your passwords in light of recent data breaches?

Codemasters informs users of website breach [Joystiq]

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