Three ways to protect yourself from the PlayStation breach
By now you’ve probably heard hackers broke into Sony’s PlayStation Network, exposing personal information of up to 77 million users worldwide. If you’re concerned, here are some tips on what you can do.
Image (c) AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara
Sony has confirmed the details of tens of millions of PlayStation Network accounts may have been stolen, following a hack attack in mid-April. Sony says this was an “illegal and unauthorised intrusion” into the PlayStation Network (and its Qriosity media service, too).
A FAQ section on the PlayStation website confirms that all the information provided by users of the network may have been compromised – this includes name, address, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network password, password security answers, online ID and maybe even credit card number and expiry date.
This isn’t the first and most certainly won’t be the last of account breaches – consider it an unfortunate by-product of the information age. Just last month, Epsilon — a Texas-based email marketing firm – confirmed millions of names and email addresses were stolen (er, including mine, actually).
If you’re a PlayStation Network member and are concerned, the following are a few tips to consider:
1. Be aware. Keep a close eye on your credit card charges — either online or by carefully looking through your paper credit card statement — and report any unauthorized activity immediately to your credit card company (and your local police). Some security experts say it’s premature to cancel your credit card just yet, but users should most definitely look at the purchases to ensure they’re all legit. It might not hurt to also call your bank and/or credit card company to tell them about the security breach. To find out which credit card you used on PlayStation Network, search your email account for messages from DoNotReply@ac.playstation.net.
2. It’s time for change. At the very least, when the service is back up and running, change your PlayStation Network ID, password and even the security questions and answers. And because it’s estimated 40 percent of us use the same password for all online activity, be sure to change the password on other accounts, too (and try not to use the same one for everything going forward). You might not want to go so far as to change email addresses, but it’s a consideration if you’re not tied to a particular account. On that note, I always use an extra webmail account (free ones like Gmail, Windows Live or Yahoo!) for things like online gaming, shopping and such – and not my main email address.
3. Don’t believe the scams. The PlayStation website says you might get an email asking you to confirm your info, like credit card number. Ignore it. Sony “will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information” so be aware of these phishing scams that may arise as a result of the security breach. These online thieves want to steal your personal identity for financial gain and will use any tricks necessary to get this information from you. Don’t be gullable. You might also get more spam, too.
Well i think playstation is at fault here.the earlier model ps3 had an option to install another operating system allowing access to their network.You can see this with the new update by blocking the other ps3 systems that have other operating systems installed.What a weak way of protecting us.Were in the world did they get the idea to allow other operating system to be installed in the first place without having to replace or modify the bios chip on top of reprogramming. not cool there guys
Installing another OS has nothing to with the PSN network. Only PlayStations running their OS were allowed to connect to PSN.
Many users used their PlayStations for other uses.
e.g. the US Air Force: http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html
I can agree, that Sony was a little late to the party with giving user’s information.
To be perfectly clear, it does not matter how much security you have on any system, all of them can be hacked. Most of the security used today is just to keep the casual wanna-be hacker out.
Whoever hacked Sony’s PSN was a person with a great familiarity with the PS3 system and Web based security.
Who’s to say that G. Hotz is not part to blame for this violation of PSN user’s, He is the one that made internal PS3 code available on the internet for anyone to obtain unscrupulously.
This Hack on the PSN will be laughable in time.
Attacks on Sites in the future will have a high probability of occurring again to be problematic, The risk of having economic or industrial significance.
I have no solution for this problem, But it’s uncertainty needs to be addressed!
This issue does need to be addressed by Sony. I myself am a PSN user and have already been seeing phishing e-mails starting to appear in my inbox of my main e-mail account I use for most online stuff.
Some of the phishing e-mails are already actually being detected by my Kaspersky Internet Security 2011, as having a fraudulent site on the other side of the link.
If you were a member of the Playstation Network (PSN), I urge you to change the passwords, on all of your online accounts. This is included, but not limited to your banking account (or other financial related), your e-mail, and all other sites you visit such as social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.
If you do start to receive spam e-mails from senders you don’t recognize, mark the e-mail as junk and block the user from contacting you again on that e-mail address, as this will block future messages.
Additionally, If you use Hotmail or other free-related e-mail clients, you can also report the sender as abusing their ToS (Terms of Service) and/or ToU (Terms of Use). This will notify the company in charge of the e-mail provider that this specific user is abusing the system and will flag them for investigation.
Also, take all other security precautions professionals have been notifying users of the PSN to utilize via the media online and offline.
Hopefully this issue will get resolved soon and the security breach that caused this to happen will be located and dismantled, to prevent this from happening again.
Lets just get online already! Its Friday, May 6, 2011. I would like to play enjoy my online games tonight.
Hacker’s, cut the crap out, your just costing us gamers money and online grief
[...] attacks were those against Sony. Over the past couple of months, hacking groups have managed to infiltrate the PSN and Qriocity services and a number of Sony-owned websites, stealing data like usernames, passwords, [...]