In case you weren’t already aware, Disney recently launched a new video streaming service called Disney+ which has been driving Netflix and other established streaming services crazy with fear and apprehension since it was first announced.
If the early indications are any clue, Netflix has little to worry about, but Disney has their hands full.
Mere hours after the service was launched, complaints started flooding in, and not just on Disney’s website. Angry customers were taking to Reddit, Twitter, and other social media outlets to complain that their accounts had been hacked the same day they began using them.
As this was happening, hold times at Disney’s support center surged past two hours, which only increased customer frustration. Worst of all, researchers quickly discovered tens of thousands of Disney+ user account details for sale on the Dark Web, with prices starting as low as $3 per account.
If you were one of the lucky customers who didn’t get your account hacked, your experience with the service still may not have been stellar. Many users who could get on it had complaints that they were either completely unable to stream the offered content or that the streaming speeds were so low that the videos were essentially unwatchable. These reports, however, were largely drowned out and lost in the shuffle given how many users had their accounts hacked on day one.
One thing that’s conspicuously absent from the Disney+ service is a two-factor authentication option. While this isn’t a magic bullet that would have solved all of the company’s launch day issues, it would have made it significantly more difficult for hackers to disrupt the launch of the service to the extent that they did.
Disney will no doubt survive and recover from the debacle, but as of now, they have a well-deserved black eye over the affair.
