Nothing says “whoops” like having anything up to 77 million of your userbase seeing their personal information (and possibly credit card data) stashed in a bag and hurled out the window, which is a shame because that’s exactly what’s happened to SONY.
The Playstation Network has been offline for days, and only now has the reason come out: someone accessed things they shouldn’t have done, and that person has been rummaging around behind the scenes.
While this is indeed a “very bad thing”, some points to consider:
* Is it even remotely possible that the person responsible was able to grab all the data on 77 million people and save it all somewhere in the short time they had available to do so? I would hope this is up there at the top of the “unlikely” scale, and the actual affected number is much lower.
That’s still bad for those affected, though.
* I’m seeing a lot of panic in relation to credit card details. If you feel your card data isn’t safe anymore, by all means jump into the (likely very large) queue in your bank and cancel it.
* Many people register on game networks and change bits and pieces of information, card details, security questions and everything else. As the PSN is currently offline, there’s no way for anybody who is unsure what data is stored to check what they have in there. As a result, you may want to go change your password reset questions on unrelated accounts along with passwords shared across different accounts too.
You don’t use the same password on different accounts anyway though, right?
Elsewhere, we have phishing attempts on XBox Live and the news that previously banned consoles may be having certain functionality restored.
Is this the videogame apocalypse? Who knows, but this probably wouldn’t have happened if you’d all stuck with your Dreamcasts. Have some information on console hacking and scams either way and stay safe.
Christopher Boyd