PlayStation accounts hacked
If you have an account with PlayStation Network, your financial information may be at risk. We advise you get in touch with us immediately to arrange for your credit card to be cancelled and reissued.
Sometime between 17th to 19th April, the data security defences of Sony’s PlayStation Network were breached by hackers. The attack penetrated Sony’s global gaming and sales network and potentially netted the cyber criminals millions of account holders’ confidential information. The compromised information stored on the company’s servers included user’s names, addresses, birthdates, e-mail addresses and possibly even credit card data.
Sony issued the following update as part of a post on the PlayStation blog:
“While all credit card information stored in our systems is encrypted and there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.”
The breach, which affects some 70 million plus users worldwide, was considered serious enough for the head of the NSW Police Fraud Squad to publicly warn Australian PlayStation Network account holders that they may need to cancel their current credit cards.
We strongly agreed with the following advice posted on the Sony blog for anyone who could be affected by this incident:
“For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. 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. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.”
We recommend that if you receive an unsolicited call from any organisation, that you call them back using publically listed information, to verify the caller is legitimate.
If you think you may have been affected by this incident please get in touch immediately so that we may cancel and reissue your credit card.
