We wanted to address you today about Nexon’s efforts to fight online hacking and improve online safety for all Nexon gamers.
The importance of online security gained national attention following Google’s revelation that their Gmail service was hacked in China. Since then, no less than 36 companies have come forward, and detailed similar problems that they have faced. As an online game company, one of Nexon’s most important missions is protecting player accounts from theft. This is a common goal shared by every online company, and achieving this goal is an ongoing fight to protect our players.
At the end of 2009, we received increased reports of accounts being compromised. While we have said little about this publicly, we have been aggressively investigating and fighting this issue and the groups behind it on multiple fronts. In order to maintain the effectiveness of these efforts, we cannot provide much detail, but we would like to share with you some of the progress we have made so far. First and foremost, our customer support team has been working to provide relief for people who have been affected by a recent account compromise issue. Once we have more details to share, affected players who have submitted a support ticket will be contacted individually by our support team. We are very thankful to our players who have been patient during this ongoing process. Our goal is to provide more updates as we further develop our relief program.
We have also taken the following steps to improve players’ online safety:
• Enhanced the security of our technological infrastructure. This includes, but is not limited to, aggressive blocking of IP addresses originating from areas outside our service region.
• Stepped up legal enforcement efforts against malicious online users and organized groups both foreign and domestic. We’re currently working very closely with law enforcement personnel in multiple countries across our service area and are actively pursuing criminal and civil cases against hack site and private server operators who are in violation of national and international laws.
• Improved online safety features to help our players safely visit not just our websites, but all websites across the Internet. In just one example, we recognized that many people were using the same login credentials across multiple websites. In order to address that issue, we recently initiated a password update campaign to encourage all of our players to update their passwords regularly.
In other areas, we are committed to improving our customer support. We revamped the Nexon Support website, upgraded our ticketing system, and launched the Nexon Knowledge Base to help players find the answers they need faster. Within our games, we are integrating a new spam and language filters to fight advertising and inappropriate comments.
We have also put more emphasis on our community outreach efforts. Most recently, we launched Facebook pages, actively engaged with our forum community, and increased our general communications both about the games and especially during maintenances in order to keep you informed.
It has been almost five years since Nexon America opened its doors and we are humbled and truly appreciative of the support and devotion shown by the dedicated fans of all of Nexon’s games. You are the lifeblood of Nexon America, and we can’t thank you enough. We look forward to many more years of enjoyment and safety on the Internet.
On behalf of all of us here at Nexon, thank you again.