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Account hacked

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Account hacked

It looks like my account was hacked earlier this week and my account was being used to give artificial traffic to a few artists who probably paid for the listens/views. I've changed my password and signed out of all locations, but I'd just like to make a record of the artists the bot was targeting for traffic.

 

These artists who pay for artificial traffic from hacked accounts endanger the privacy of users and degrade the quality of Spotify's service.

 

  • AguilaEye
  • Lyronic
  • Matt3Fx
  • RAGAROX (spelled with various look-alike unicode characters - spotify search still finds them just fine)
  • DJ Charger
  • Krizzlybear
  • Ferunga
  • Theron
  • l3_SlaeeR
  • AVY(R)IAN - (The R is a unicode character in a circle)
  • Kringeratey
  • Romano Smith

Additionally, I wish that Spotify would do region checking to report or prevent suspicious sign ins. If I'm signed in in both Los Angeles where the majority of my traffic is and Romania at the same time, one of those is clearly not right. As far as I can tell, there is no way for a user to currently view all recent sign in locations nor does Spotify seem to check.

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Marked as solution

Hi @johnmaikeru,

 

We appreciate you sharing your concerns here.

 

Rest assured, we take account security very seriously, and we're always here to assist.

 

We strongly recommend following all the steps in the article that's been previously posted; it should give you all the correct steps to ensure that you get your account back on track.

 

Thanks!

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16 Replies

Hi! I've been looking for answers to a similar situation, and can confirm this happened to me too. Password has been changed obviously, but it's still quite concerning that someone got hold of the account regardless.

 

How did you figure out it was a bot for specific artists, and not just someone that got hold of a free Spotify account for their own listening purposes? I started off trying to find forums for that kind of thing to see if my account popped up, but your explanation seems more likely now.

The factors that lead me to believe that my account was used by a bot is that first, all of the artists that the bot targeted for listening had very very few followers. The few I checked only had a single follower, and it could have been the artist's personal account - a little like "liking" your own Facebook post. The second is that the music didn't share any common theme or genre. The third is that it looks like the bot had a rotation happening. It would listen to a song from one artist, then choose a song from another artist on the list, and so on, in a random fashion. This is an assumption, but it seems like unnatural behavior to manually search a new artist and song after each one ends. Usually people put on a playlist or listen to a couple songs in an album in a row. 
If your account is like mine, it's not being sold for personal use. Rather it's being held onto by the hacker, and people can buy traffic to boost the ratings and rankings of their music behind the scenes. You probably wouldn't find anything about your account on forums, in that case. 

Hey @bukkits and @At0m1Ca15,

 

First of all, thank you for posting your concerns to the Community 🙂 It's always good to have an open-floor for these sort of issues. I'm happy to say that your comments and concens have been given to the relevant teams within Spotify for analysis.

 

In the meantime, you should be good with your account since you've changed your password and signed out everywhere. If you suspect that your account is being used by someone/something else, you can follow the steps outlined here.

 

Cheers, and thank you so much for posting!

Tim

Just chiming in to say this exact thing happened to me, just now. Down to the very same list of artists. 

Hey @nothanksok,

 

I've noted to the Spotify Team that you too had the same incident. In the meantime, if you haven't already, I'd read through and follow the steps outlined here.

 

Cheers,
Tim

Registered a Community account just to chime in on this- had the exact same **bleep** list of artists appear in my 'Recently Played'. Who the **bleep** is Krizzlybear?

 

Spotify needs to:

 

1) Confirm that their security hasn't been compromised

2) Confirm that the password I used for my Spotify account hasn't been leaked

3) Confirm how many users were affected by this "hack"

4) Confirm that they will take action against the "artists" for hiring "hackers" to generate traffic for them

5) Make an official announcement about this. Users need to be made aware of this- I was initially given the standard generic support fob-off, until I decided to do some digging (read: Googled Krizzlybear hack). Why do you expect your users to self-service for your shortcomings, Spotify?

Marked as solution

Hi @johnmaikeru,

 

We appreciate you sharing your concerns here.

 

Rest assured, we take account security very seriously, and we're always here to assist.

 

We strongly recommend following all the steps in the article that's been previously posted; it should give you all the correct steps to ensure that you get your account back on track.

 

Thanks!

Dear Always Wonderful Moderator Jack,

 

My account was compromised again. You've obviously ignored my requests for transparency regarding this situation and it's safe to assume that your system has been compromised.

 

Thanks for the top-level service, ace.

 

Post has been edited by a Rock Star.

Same problem. Realised there was a problem a few months ago (and changed my pass), now my year wrapped is totally infested with these artists, though...

Me too. Same problem, same artists. This is terrible. Any way of removing them from my account Spotify?

 
 

@JackS

 

Any updates? It doesn't appear that anything is being done to rectify this situation or to prevent further security incidents.

 

Additionally, it sounds like nothing is being done to the artist accounts who have paid to boost their popularity through illicit means. 

No rpely from official staff yet

Same problem and super annoying.  Mine seems to have boosted French rap artists - and this email was found in my users - ( - snipped - )

 

Can this person be blocked? 

 

Curious is this ever got fixed. This has happened to me twice in the last year. I have reset my offline devices and signed out everywhere... but still happening. Is it happening due to me signing in through FB? My music is getting interupted and the app is asking if I want to continue listening on my "FireStick" (don't own a firestick). It would be great to figure something out. I haven't found a resolution yet. 

 

Also, not as important but when I use my discover weekly playlist, it is playing songs from the person that is using my account when I am not active on it. Playing songs I've never heard of and in a different language.

Hey @justinbraftery!

 

Help's here 🙂 If you're still having issues with someone else using your account, I'd recommend following the steps in this article again, as well as following the steps in this article!

 

Cheers,

Tim

Identical issue here, down to the artists. It's going on three months since this thread was started. I know there's a Spotify rep out there with their hand hovering over the canned response button as if we don't have enough of that in this thread, but I strongly suggest not pressing it. Call your boss and get these artists banned. As long as you allow an economy for hacked plays to perpetuate, people will continue getting hacked. See how that works?

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