Epic addresses claim that Fortnite account data is being leaked
Epic Games has released an official statement on claims that Fortnite account data, namely email addresses, are being leaked. The allegation seemed to kick off with a tweet from pro player Yung Calc, who tweeted a message encouraging players to disable the 'Show on Career Leaderboard' setting over concerns that their emails were being leaked.
Yung Calc has since deleted the original tweets after pressure from players and Epic's official response to the allegation. In a tweet on its Fortnite Status Twitter account, the company said that it has investigated the potential issue and found that there isn't one — your account data isn't being leaked.
We investigated reports that leaderboards were divulging non-public information or causing unauthorized logouts.
This is not the case.
We are certain that affected accounts remain secure, player info (incl. email addresses) isn't being divulged & any logout issue is resolved.
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) January 22, 2021
Though it's all a bit messy, the gist of the concern seems to be that some pro players have experienced being suddenly logged out of their games. This, the idea goes, must mean that someone has attempted to reset their Fortnite password, which would only be possible if they knew the player's email address.
I'm also deleting the original tweets since I say that fortnite tracker caused it, when apparently they didn't. Also never forget that epic games made it so that password resets log you out, showing how forward thinking their company really is https://t.co/Fb3ZMf7gXN
— yung calculator (@yungcalc) January 22, 2021
Yung Calc's tweets claimed that hackers were accessing players' email addresses via the leaderboards, hence his suggestion that players should disable this feature. Doing so, however, would also mean their game stats couldn't be tracked by, for example, Fortnite Tracker.
Players shouldn't disable their leaderboards out of fear of having their account data leaked. What is true is that some players have experienced sudden unexpected logouts for reasons that remain unclear. Epic didn't say whether it has a fix inbound to correct this issue.