Trust your game? Rovio exposes Angry Birds Friends database

It’s been over a decade since Finnish game maker Rovio hit the big time with Angry Birds. New levels were periodically added to keep players interested and, capitalizing on that success, the company followed it up with other games such as Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds 2. They also released a tournament-based version called Angry Birds Friends. 

Rovio has kept the tournament version fresh and exciting by releasing loads of new levels every week. The goal of the game is to beat the people you're playing against and after completing each level you will see where you rank amongst those ahead and behind you  -- both places and points. 

Now it seems Angry Birds Friends has had a little problem, and it isn’t a new one, just a newly discovered one. 

Those who opened the game yesterday were greeted with an unexpected message that begins "A copy of the Angry Birds Friends game database was publicly accessible on the internet for a period of time." It then attempts to assure users that it did not contain contact or payment information. 

More info can be found on the company’s site.

From August 25, 2020 to May 24, 2021 a copy of the Angry Birds Friends game database was publicly accessible on the internet. The database would have been very difficult to find and we have no evidence that anyone has accessed the data with malicious intent.

As soon as this was discovered, we immediately prevented all external access to the database on May 24, 2021. We also involved our lead data protection authority without delay.

The database contained the in-game profile, including game progress and leaderboard scores, of each player who had started playing by August 25, 2020. In addition, the profiles of those players who had registered via Facebook or had connected to Facebook may include some of their public Facebook profile information (at most first name, last name, gender and date of birth, if that is what the player has added to their Facebook profile).

The Facebook information could be slightly worrisome given that’s the way most users likely log in; the game isn’t much fun without it. But, on the whole it doesn’t seem there’s too much harm here, as far as we’re told, anyway.