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If the above headline doesn’t make you say ‘What the f@#$?”, then I don’t know what will.

But as bizarre and nutty as it sounds, a popular Japanese Youtuber’s pet goldfish managed to log into his Nintendo Switch account, fiddle around with the setting, and then charge a purchase to his credit card. Only $3 mind you, but still an amazing feat for something with no feet, or hands. Oh, and he downloaded a new avatar and opened a PayPal account as well while he was at it.

According to CNN, YouTuber Mutekimaru had set up an advanced motion detector that visually divides the fish aquarium into several sections, with each area corresponding to a separate gaming button on the Nintendo Switch console. The camera detected the motion of the fish and picked up the corresponding button wherever it stopped, allowing it to remotely control the buttons.

[imagesource:Mutekimaru/Youtube]

Everything was going swimmingly for the gamer until his online game crashed during a live stream. Mutekimaru walked away from his console for a while, and in his absence, the game rebooted and returned to the home screen. Only this time the fish was in control via the motion detector in his tank.

Without actually touching the screen, the inadvertent hacker successfully managed to change the owner’s name on his Switch, download a new avatar for him and set up a PayPal account. It then added 500 yen (£3) to his Switch account.

It wasn’t until seven hours later that the gamer returned and realised what had happened. Mutekimaru has approached Nintendo for a discount and we can’t help but wish we could hear his phone call with customer service.

With tigers on the loose in Johannesburg and fishes hacking PayPal accounts in Japan, it looks like 2023 is going to be a wild ride.

[source:independentuk/cnn/youtube]