U.K. Information Commissioner Wants Answers From Sony

[Andy Chalk]

U.K. Information Commissioner Wants Answers From Sony

The Information Commissioner's Office [http://www.ico.gov.uk/] in the U.K. has confirmed that it will tear Sony a new one over the loss of private PSN customer data, or at the very least ask a few pointed questions about it.

In the wake of the great PSN Data Dump of Ought-Eleven, U.K. consumers group Gamers' Voice asked the Information Commissioner's Office to investigate how such a huge and potentially damaging leak of information could occur and whether Sony had done all it could to give consumers a heads-up that they could be at risk.

"The response by Sony to this situation is at best disappointing and at worse dangerous as it has left up to 75 million customers at risk of identity theft and fraud," Gamers' Voice chairman Paul Gibson told Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-27-gamers-voice-demands-answers-from-sony]. "While the Playstation Network being down for the better part of the week is unfortunate, it is the continuous lack of information being provided to gamers on the potential loss of their personal details which is most worrying."

Gibson said he wants the ICO to "force some answers" out of Sony and the ICO is apparently happy to do just that. "The Information Commissioner's Office takes data protection breaches extremely seriously," the agency said. "Any business or organization that is processing personal information in the U.K. must ensure they comply with the law, including the need to keep data secure."

"We have recently been informed of an incident which appears to involve Sony," it continued. "We are contacting Sony and will be making further inquiries to establish the precise nature of the incident before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken by this office."

The Information Commissioner's Office promotes and upholds privacy and access to information rights for individuals, and in 2010 was given the authority to levy fines in cases of privacy law violations. It issued the first such fine [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11821203] in November 2010, imposing a £100,000 ($165,000) penalty against the Hertfordshire County Council after it mistakenly faxed two separate documents pertaining to a child sex abuse case to the wrong recipients.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-27-ico-confirms-it-will-quiz-sony-over-psn]


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[Guthie]

"We have recently been informed of an incident which appears to involve Sony."

Little slow on the uptake there, ICO?

 

[Guthie]

Edit: Damned CAPTCHA-induced double posts.

 

[sportsboy85]

Man, I just want my online back :'(

 

[mjc0961]

Good. I'm glad that powerful people and organizations aren't content with Sony's "We told people as soon as we know, honest!" story. I hope they find out if it's true or if Sony is lying their asses off to try and save face. I for one would really like to know before I ever purchase another Sony game platform again. If they're being honest, I'll consider it, but if they lied, Sony and I are done.

 

[JDKJ]

Sony. Charge people per month to use PSN and then use that money for secure protection. Retarded someone got all that information that could have major issues with cloned cards and stolen money. Atleast when you are paying for a service you should expect a certain amount of protection. When it is free then i am not surprised this stuff happens.

What makes you think that free or pay makes a difference? Servers getting hacked and credit card information stolen is a fairly common occurrence and one that doesn't seem at all dependent on whether the company involved is offering the service for free or not. Matter of fact, my intuition tells me that pay sites would be a more attractive target for a hacker. Those sites are more likely to contain juicy credit card information than free sites.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

Sony. Charge people per month to use PSN and then use that money for secure protection. Retarded someone got all that information that could have major issues with cloned cards and stolen money. Atleast when you are paying for a service you should expect a certain amount of protection. When it is free then i am not surprised this stuff happens.

If it's electronic, someone can hack it. Doesn't matter if someone pays for it or not really, and with the PSN being free, isn't there a lower likelihood of there being Credit card information on people's accounts?

EDIT: Ugh... ninja'd

 

[Woodsey]

Sony. Charge people per month to use PSN and then use that money for secure protection. Retarded someone got all that information that could have major issues with cloned cards and stolen money. Atleast when you are paying for a service you should expect a certain amount of protection. When it is free then i am not surprised this stuff happens.

The same thing has happened to the 360, just not to every user.

Oh boy, things just keep looking brighter for $ony by the minute.

Kind of weird that no one $eem$ to be blaming the one$ who actually $tole the data from $ony.

(I a$$ume thi$ i$ what we do with $'$ now.)

OT: $ooo, what? All they're going to be able to do i$ a$k them $ome question$ on it, like every gaming journali$t will do a$ $oon a$ they get the chance.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Good Lord. I swear, if the world (or at least the U.S. and British) put this much effort into tracking down the people actually responsible for this, they'd already be caught, tried, quartered, and their heads left on pikes as a warning to the rest hackers that, piss off enough people, and you simply cannot hide. Sorry, too graphic?

 

[JDKJ]

Sony. Charge people per month to use PSN and then use that money for secure protection. Retarded someone got all that information that could have major issues with cloned cards and stolen money. Atleast when you are paying for a service you should expect a certain amount of protection. When it is free then i am not surprised this stuff happens.

What makes you think that free or pay makes a difference? Servers getting hacked and credit card information stolen is a fairly common occurrence and one that doesn't seem at all dependent on whether the company involved is offering the service for free or not. Matter of fact, my intuition tells me that pay sites would be a more attractive target for a hacker. Those sites are more likely to contain juicy credit card information than free sites.

If it is free then you can hardly complain if it goes wrong. Thats just how i see it and everything online. You pay for what you get. If they charge you a subscription then they have even more responsibility to make sure your information is safe. Oh and by the way, i dont use live in case you were thinking that.

I dunno 'bout that. It's just two different business models. PSN lets you in for free in hopes that they'll make up the lost subscription fees on the back end with more downloads, etc. Xbox Live picks up the subscription fees on the front end knowing that they'll get less subscribers and therefore less revenue from downloads, etc., on the back end but hopes that the subscription fees will offset the loss of back end revenue. But both are, as a matter of sound business policy, equally incentivized to keep customer information secure. It's bad for business if they don't.

 

[fundayz]

For a British Office, the ICO sure has a some teeth in it!

Quoted for the Lulz

Seriously though, it's nice to see action is being take to see exactly how preventable this should've been.

 

[spartandude]

this kind of hacking is common on the internet. but to have it on such a large scale (millions of people) so quickly and when only one company (sony) is involved is rediculous and requires investigation

 

[PatrickXD]

So ICO fined £100,000 for 2 misplaced documents.
This is 75million.
Goodbye, Sony.