Sony faces lawsuit over PlayStation hack

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 29 April 2011, 20:28 IST
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Bangalore: Sony is having a tough time, since the Sony PlayStation's server went down and it was reported that a hacker broke into the server and accessed 77 million users information. The data includes credit card information, e-mail addresses, user names and passwords. Now the users of PlayStation filed a lawsuit against Sony alleging that the company's security was poor and the company failed to encrypt personal information. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court's Northern District of California seeks class action status. The filing said that this has caused millions of consumers fear and damage. The lawsuit also claims that Sony was aware of vulnerabilities with its system for some time, but did not disclose it. However Sony did not respond to the lawsuit. But the company said that it was investigating on the matter. Sony has advised users to be aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. The company said that users should change their passwords once the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored. The lawyers (of the plaintiff) said that the personal information hacked could be used to access the passwords of other online services like bank websites and personal email accounts. Though the credit card information also may have been taken by the hacker, Sony reports that the credit card database was encrypted.