PlayStation network is still down and as if not getting the daily CoD dose was not enough, Sony has come out and given a bigger cause
to worry about. The Japanese company has admitted that its users personal data may have been stolen. It also said that the outage may continue for one more week. The network has over 75 million users globally and all these are now at the risk of having their credit card detail stolen. Sony admitted that the hackers may have also taken users email addresses and birth dates. It has also asked its users to remain extra careful about their credit cards and change their passwords. Sony's Qriocity music service has also been breached.
Sony has sent an email to its customers stating, "Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID."
The accident could not have happened at worse time for Sony. The company just launched two its tablets, which have strong PlayStation flavor, but the way Sony chose to deal with outage scenario, is going to cause a big shadow of doubt over the success of these tablets. The network has been down for almost a week now and before the release of personal data theft news, Sony was not very active in communicating with its users.
Lately there had been avalanche of security breaches. A little earlier, mass mail company Epsilon's data was breached. Epsilon served various big companies with massive database. Sony is currently in the apologetic mode but still has made no reference about possible compensation it may pay, should the hacking leads to pecuniary losses to its users. Some fingers had pointed towards well known hacking group 'Anonymous', which simply refused to take any responsibility for this incident. Let's just hope that this fiasco ends with no major losses. But it sure should serve as a wake up call for both the companies and the users.