Scammers and hackers need to be able to access your account to get what they want. If they can’t guess your password, they might try to trick you into giving it to them.

It’s possible to defend yourself from some of these attacks by being careful with your account information, by being able to detect and resist phony deals, and by having good password hygiene.

Don’t Trust Cheaters, Be Careful With Your Account Information

Chip sellers, loot services, cheats, bots, and other hacks are all scams.
Zynga is the only authorized seller of virtual goods and currency for Zynga games. Remember, people that claim to help players cheat are usually only cheating players.

Giving anyone your information to use these services can place your account and personal information at risk. Using these programs violates our Terms of Service, may violate the law, and can result in account suspensions or bans.

If you think you may have accidentally loaded one of these programs, please report what happened to Zynga Customer Support.

Look out for Scammers

It’s important that you know how to detect scammers offering phony deals or asking for too much information.

Look for some of the common mistakes that scammers make, like:

• Misspellings and typos.
• Words and sentences in different languages, fonts, or with odd markings.
• File attachments you have to open. Zynga will never send messages that require you to open attachments, nor do we permit our partners and affiliates to do so.
• Surveys, quizzes, etc. in exchange for free in-game items. Zynga does not allow partners or affiliates to email players with these offers.
• Mismatched links: When you hover over a link, look at the status bar and make sure the link actually goes to the link shown in the email. Zynga will never use an IP address (string of numbers) followed by directories, such as: http://123.456.789.123/zynga/

Scammers tend to ask for personal information that Zynga Support or security personnel will never ask you for, including:

• Your account password.
• Your social security number or tax identification number.
• Your full credit card number or PIN number.

Scammers frequently use threatening language. Zynga will not send you notices of violations or breaches of “terms and conditions.” Look out for messages from the “Zynga Police” or “Zynga Security.” These messages are not from Zynga. Don’t worry about their threats, just delete their messages. All legitimate warnings issued from Zynga will be presented to players in-game, upon login.

Scammers are everywhere. They use websites, e-mail, twitter, Facebook and other social networks, fan sites, bulletin boards, and chat rooms to entice players.

Be wary of:

• Links that claim to go to a Zynga game but don’t seem to work right, even if the address includes “zynga”, “farm”, “mafiawars”, or other words related to Zynga games. If you aren’t sure, load the game how you normally do instead of following the link.
• Claims of rare, secret, and exclusive in-game items, free coins, chips, or gifts.
• “password reset” and other technical messages. We won’t reset your password unless you ask us to.
• Threats to ban your account if you don’t follow instructions to enter your name and password.
• Strange e-mail senders. E-mail from Zynga will originate from either a zyngamail.com or zynga.com e-mail address.

Use a Better Password, and Keep It a Secret

But even if you avoid chip sellers, loot services, bots, and scammers, there’s one more thing that you should learn: how to make sure your password is secret and strong.

To keeping your password secret, just don’t share it with anyone. Not even Zynga. Zynga will never ask for your password. Protect your passwords, and don’t share them with anyone.

But protecting a weak password isn’t good enough. Use a password that scammers can’t guess or easily hack. It’s easier than you think.

Here are a few tips that can help you create a better password

• Longer passwords are better than short passwords.
• Passwords that are made of a few words are even better than long passwords.
• Remember that you can use spaces, and punctuation, and symbols too.

Try it!

Think of something you like, or that you want to remember, and make a password out of it. Here are a few examples:

• “double down in Poker!”
• “I’m the Mayor of my city”
• “Zynga games are #1 :)”

Unfortunately, there are a few things that make your password easy to guess.

• Passwords that are just a word from the dictionary can be guessed easily: avoid them!
• Passwords about the game are also easy to guess, and so are other game-words like ‘mafia’, ‘poker’, or ‘facebook’.
• Don’t use your username as your password. Only use your password as your password.

Zynga is a member of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a global enforcement association focused on eliminating the fraud and identity theft that results from phishing, pharming, and email spoofing. Please visit their web site for more information. You can report phishing attempts to Zynga Customer Support.

Please include the suspicious link, as well as any information you have regarding the sender.

If you have any questions about the collection, storage, use, or security of your information, please send an inquiry to [email protected] (link sends e-mail)

Occasionally, Zynga does offer legitimate in-game extras on official Zynga pages, forums, or twitter pages. Please check official Zynga sources to confirm a legitimate promotion before clicking on what may be a fake offer. If the source of the message is not an official Zynga page, these messages are likely not from us. We generally recommend that you log in to the game and utilize our in-game system for accepting any gifts.