FPL hacked: Fantasy Premier League accounts hacked and squads deleted

The popular Fantasy Premier League app has issued a security update following accounts being hacked.

The official Fantasy Premier League (FPL) platform has been forced to issue a security update following a number accounts were broken into and – in some cases – teams deleted from the game.

FPL allows users to choose a fantasy squad from a list of English Premier League players to compete with friends and family. It has an estimated eight million players per season. This morning, some of them woke up this morning to find their teams, points so far and accounts deleted.

In a statement via their website, the official platform for the FPL said “We are aware of a small number of Fantasy Premier League managers reporting that their team has either been deleted or compromised in some way.

Fantasy Premier League are advising managers to ensure they regularly change their password. Photo: Contributed.

“There is no indication or evidence of a security breach on the accounts of these individuals via fantasy.premierleague.com or the Premier League mobile app.”

The statement, however, did continue to advise users not to share logins with others and to steer clear of third party website that could put the security of their team at risk, adding: “We have never condoned or endorsed the use of third-party websites or applications to aid FPL team management.

“In addition, we recommend that FPL managers practise good password hygiene by using a strong password that would be hard to guess, creating a unique password for FPL that isn’t used elsewhere, and updating the password regularly.”

The latest hack will be of concern to the makers of the FPL app, with today’s incident following on from a similar problem users were faced with in 2019.

Back in September of that year, the FPL advised three managers had found their team deleted, with the owners of the game citing "malicious third parties” were to blame for the error and that, on investigation, there had been no evidence of a server error.

All three teams were reinstated after it was confirmed they had been broken into and hacked by a third party.