The ApocalyPS3 continues as yesterday Sony took down Sony Online Entertainment in response to their discovery of “an issue.” According to CNet, after SOE was taken down, this message was sent: “Dear Valued SOE Customers, We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today Monday. We apologize for any inconvenience and greatly appreciate your patience.”
Sony released more information at the SOE website, detailing the breach: “Stolen information includes, to the extent you provided it to us, the following: name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password.” There’s also “evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained.”
Holy crap. This is really bad, Sony. The company is pointing SOE users to the government-offered free credit report service: “U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.” In other news, I just got my free t-shirt for participating in the Rewards Beta. I think I’ll wear it when I sign up for my free credit report.
