You may be aware of the recent Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) hacks that may well have included private and confidential information from many of it's 77 million plus subscribers a few weeks ago. You may even be affected by this. Not only has Sony been slow to bring the PSN back up, but they have also brought down the servers for their Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) branch, as a result of yet another hack. This part affects me, as I play DC Universe Online, and now not only can't I, but I may have also had my own personal information swiped. Damn skippy.
The statement from Sony is that they decided to temporarily bring the SOE servers down as a result of their ongoing investigation of the PSN hacks. Sony has stated, however, that SOE users weren’t affected by the attack, and hasn’t changed that story at all, which is somewhat comforting.
The statement on Sony’s site reads: “We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately... We apologize for any inconvenience and greatly appreciate your patience.”
Whether or not the damage is still spreading and Sony is uncovering more issues in the wake of the original attack remains to be seen. There’s no doubt Sony would like to update its community only to say service is restored and they’ve determined no data was lost, but bringing the environment offline is a big step just to prove that. Unfortunately, it’s possible we haven’t seen the end of Sony’s security woes just yet.
There's been talk of Sony offering up it's users free games and/or free playtime in compensation of the inconvenience caused by the down time, and that seems all well and good for a company trying its hardest not to lose any more money than they have to. But that wasn't good enough for some.
Less than a week after the first PlayStation Network-related class action suit was filed against Sony, a second legal claim has been initiated. While the first didn't ask for a specific amount, the second is quite clear on how much it wants from Sony - at least 1 billion dollars in damages. But those aren't US dollars, they're Canadian one, which means Sony might have to shell out more money as a result of our strong dollar.
The second suit was announced on Monday by the Toronto law firm of McPhadden Samac Tuovi LLP, with Sony Canada, Sony USA, and "other Sony entities" being named as defendants. The firm has commenced the proposed class action on behalf of 21-year-old Mississauga, Ontario, resident Natasha Maksimovic. Described as a years-long PlayStation user, the lawsuit quotes Maksimovic as being outraged by the PSN outage and subsequent data breach.
"If you can't trust a huge multi-national corporation like Sony to protect your private information, who can you trust?" asked Maksimovic in a statement. "It appears to me that Sony focuses more on protecting its games than its PlayStation users."
The class action proposes that the C$1 billion ($1.04 billion) in damages be used to pay for "costs of credit monitoring services and fraud insurance coverage for two years." It was unclear if the amount would be applied only to the cost of the 1 million Canadian PSN users affected by the still-ongoing outage, or all the 77 million global PSN users whose information may have been exposed.
It seems quite clear that Sony really, really wants its users to take its bri..er, "generous offer" which will essentially mean that any subscriber who does, will effectively no longer have any stake in the class action suits held against the entertainment giant.
For more information on the suit, and if you can participate, follow this link: http://www.mcst.ca/ClassActions/ClassActionsHome/SonyPSN/
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