The PSN debacle continues

The PSN debacle continues

Whilst the prospect of potentially having your money being stolen is a bad thing, there is still good news to be found. Though, only barely considerable to be good news. 

The Bank of America and Chase have been informed about the breach. Meaning that, if there is something fishy on your accounts, then that will mean a whole lot less legal trouble. Things should go a lot smoother if you have accounts with those two companies. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, news providers from all over the world have already reported on this matter so it is safe to presume that your banks are aware of the situation. If not, simply refer to a news article or report.

Secondly, people who linked their steam account to PSN to play Portal 2 are in the safe. Valve said that steam remained completely safe because of the fact that Steam and PSN are two completely separate entities.

Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut responds to this debacle via a letter to the President of Sony Computer Entertainment of America claiming that said SCEA has known about the breach as early as April 20th. 

"When a data breach occurs, it is essential that customers be immediately notified about whether and to what extent their personal and financial information has been compromised. Additionally, PlayStation Network users should be provided with financial data security services, including free access to credit reporting services, for two years, the costs of which should be borne by Sony. Affected individuals should also be provided with sufficient insurance to protect them from the possible financial consequences of identity theft.

I am concerned that PlayStation Network users’ personal and financial information may have been inappropriately accessed by a third party. Compounding this concern is the troubling lack of notification from Sony about the nature of the data breach. Although the breach occurred nearly a week ago, Sony has not notified customers of the intrusion, or provided information that is vital to allowing individuals to protect themselves from identity theft, such as informing users whether their personal or financial information may have been compromised.  Nor has Sony specified how it intends to protect these consumers.

PlayStation Network users deserve more complete information on the data breach, as well as the assurance that their personal and financial information will be securely maintained. I appreciate your prompt response on this important issue."

I, for one, am extremely happy to see that the Senator is standing up for the PSN users, instead of doing what I actually expected from a political response. That is to gun for Sony and try to take them down to prove that games, and the gaming world, is evil just to benefit their political career. Unfortunately he is kind of making a too big of a deal out of it. It's not like you'll suddenly see that someone ordered HOT TRANNY'S VOLUME XII twenty times on your account.

Sony in the meantime has made an official response to this letter. On PSBlog, Patrick Seybold, Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media, posted a clarification on a few points.

"There’s a difference in timing between when we identified there was an intrusion and when we learned of consumers’ data being compromised. We learned there was an intrusion April 19th and subsequently shut the services down. We then brought in outside experts to help us learn how the intrusion occurred and to conduct an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the incident. It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach. We then shared that information with our consumers and announced it publicly this afternoon."

Looks like they did everything by the book. Perhaps it was for the benefit of the world that they didn't just outright came out and said that the shit had hit the fan, bigtime. By doing an in-depth investigation beforehand, they not only covered themselves up, but they also gathered up information to make sure that when people started gunning for them, they did it for a good reason. 

More news from the disaster front comes from the developer side of things. Indie developers are noting a significant drop in their sales, this not only because of the fact that PSN is down, but because nobody can see their advertisements.

 "We're rooting for Sony to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. PSN is one of our primary channels for reaching console game fans, and it does feel as though Sony should compensate customers, if not developers, for the outage." - PopCap representative to a Gamasutra journalist.

Alexey Menshikov, CEO of Kiev-based Beatshapers is hoping that Sony will recompensate the losses that these developers have made because of this debacle. I for one cannot agree more, since it is not their fault. 


Source:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109579-Some-Good-News-Surfaces-Regarding-PSN-Catastrophe
http://blumenthal.senate.gov/press/release/index.cfm?id=82698973-255D-4B92-9E18-39E5937C9361
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/26/clarifying-a-few-psn-points/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109581-PSN-Developers-Discuss-PSN-Disaster
http://www.escapistmagazine.com