Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the current outage of PlayStation Network & Qriocity services. We are currently working to send a similar message to the one below via email to all of our registered account holders regarding a compromise of personal information as a result of an illegal intrusion on our systems. These malicious actions have also had an impact on your ability to enjoy the services provided by PlayStation Network and Qriocity including online gaming and online access to music, movies, sports and TV shows. We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week.
We’re working day and night to ensure it is done as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and feedback.
Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:
We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:
- Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;
- Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
- Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.
We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.
Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While 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.
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.
To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information for those who wish to consider it:
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.
We have also provided names and contact information for the three major U.S. credit bureaus below. At no charge, U.S. residents can have these credit bureaus place a “fraud alert” on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. This service can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it also may delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below.
Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790You may wish to visit the web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General, and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone (877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; telephone: (888) 743-0023; or www.oag.state.md.us.
We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.
Sincerely,
Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment
The same information can be found at the following websites:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#non-us
For those that live the United States, but not Massachusetts or Puerto Rico:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#us
If you live in Massachusetts:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#mass
If you live in Puerto Rico
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#pr
fake address and PSN cards for all future purchases, I guess. if PSN ever comes back up, that is.
this is a huge slap in the face to your customers that trusted you with there info
Thanx for the info. , but take as much time tht is needed…
This is so messed up. I hope nobody’s data was stolen and used.
Man I want to smash some mother ****ing hackers face in right now! Iam sure hes smiling and giggling right now…
@azariaspice – “It’s not like it’s their fault that it was hacked into”
>suing george hotz for ps3 exploit
>raiding the houses of hackers and arresting them
>trying to hire a hacker to fight fire with fire (she refused because SONY’s treatment of hotz)
>SONY DEMANDING IP addresses of people who so much as glanced at a PS3 hack even if they just curious
>forcing customers to choose between OtherOS with no PSN or PSN with no OtherOS
>arrogant attitude with lies about why they do the things they do
>blaming anonymous for something they had nothing to do…
yeah…it’s not their fault they got hacked into at all :/
This is a lot more serious than I thought. I’m glad I decided to stop using my credit card and start using gift cards to buy stuff from PSN. Right now, I have $18.01 in my wallet from a card I bought a few weeks ago. If there is a penny less, you can rest assured that Sony will be hearing from me! Seriously, damn these hackers!
People relax they are just saying just in case some cc info got stolen but it is highly unlikely that anyone’s info got stolen. Just business insurance to cover all bases. If some1 sues sony i’ll laugh because it is so ridiculous. PSN is coming back within a week so be happy
143, oh yeah, because i’m sure they meant for this to happen….noob
+ xxnike629xx on April 26th, 2011 at 1:10 pm said:
“Hey Sony! How about you guys taking responsibility for all 75 million users instead of telling us to keep track of it all while you guys do absolutely nothing?”
They are taking some of the responsibility by fixing the problem, improving the security and keeping us informed. It’s quite obvious that you are angry, but I can bet that nothing has been done to harm or destroy your account(s). Basically you are posting here just to “make noise”.
Sony is doing whatever they can to resolve the issue and to bring back it’s online service. What more do you want them to do? Give those affected a free gift, discounts, free life long games? Sony and it’s partner may have lost millions these past few days. Should they spend more of their own money, not only to pay for the help they received and their employees, but now to pay 75 million people?
Why not make the person or persons responsible for this issue (hacking) pay the cost? Don’t you think these people should bear the full brunt of the responsibility?
Don’t blame Sony? Our data should have been secure you Sony fanboys! Maybe you don’t have to worry about your personal information because your mommies will handle it, but for the rest of us adults the concept of identity theft is a big issue.
When will the service be up and running again?
@150 okay so why hasn’t it happened to the other systems troll
I’m not really going to get into this. Most of you are not really worth the time (much less my time.) You can all be disapointed if you’d like, but you all seriously do, not know the “full” story. To say you are going to do, this; even saying you’ll sue or switch to Microsoft are the actions of a “child”. Plain and simple. If you’d stop blindly acting like a conformist and bandwagoning like a mindless null on the hate-wagon. Seriously some of you need to grow up.
As for the “personal/private” information being leaked. It’s nothing “new”. Ever year and day someone’s information is stolen. Does no one here remember the social security hacks? How, about the FBI being hacked? Governments are hacked every year. The fact that “finally” someone hacked the PlayStation Network is actually amazing. I do, not remember you people complaining about the other hacks. Seems hypocritical to me. You should always be checking your bank statements and accounts regularly anyway though. This is nothing new. Plus thus far no one has come foward with proof (yet) that due to this intrusion that they are a victim to idenity theft, and loss of money.
Be smart people…
Ok for those babies saying sony is on our side let me give you an ex…… You hire a bodyguard he protects your info it is safe for a while than someone attacks him, he wins. That person says they’ll be back. Your body guard ignores it. 2 weeks later he gets attacked by more people and gets your stuff stolen. Who are you going to blame? the people who stole it or your bodyguard? your gonna blame the BG for not protecting you. So stop being fanboys and see the light. You’re not telling the bodyguard its ok you’re on our side. you’re gonna be mad cause you trusted him with your info and he let you down
So a hacker has your name and address. Big deal. That’s pretty trivial to get anyway — don’t freak out about it.
What’s more bothersome is that they may have your username and password. THAT could affect a lot more people, if you use the same username and password in multiple locations. The advice they left out — start changing your passwords EVERYWHERE, and do it NOW, if you use the same password on PSN that you use elsewhere (and as much as I hate saying it, use a different password on each site).
Time to sue Sony because it was their responsiblity to protect all of this information and they failed! we singed a contract, If I am legally bound to follow all of those things in the contract, then they to should be held accountable for the things they didnt uphold! I AM SO MAD that you were careless with my information expect a phonecall from my lawyers in the next couple of days sony!
that has nothing to do with it, you’re acting like they opened the doors up and said “c’mon on in, take what you want”
Outrageous.
You should be ashamed…and it should be in my darn email box before reading it on a blog.
this is bad…
I dare a hacker to come to my house
Oh jeez!!!!!!! Great I had card tied to my account and you [DELETED] let it get compromised. ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
thanks for the update….
you’re the troll 152
it says in the letter that they are sending this through e-mail noobs, have you ever tried to send a message to 75 million ppl, they have send it in groups
161 they should had it secured from the since launch but hackers broke the system security that should have been already a sign to sony to that there network was in danger of being hacked
The guy that says “expect a call from my lawyer” on the PS Blog is a guy that doesn’t actually have a lawyer.
Eh. As long as senior hacker dude 3000 doesnt get to using my credit card info I think I will be okay with things. I’ve been just playing games offline or using one of my other systems/PC since… hope things are fixed up without too much trouble.
“We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week.”
I’d say that those of you expecting to be gaming online in a week are setting yourself up for even more disappointment. This says expect to restore some services within a week. It doesn’t say what or even for sure. You better believe the store and account info sections will be top priority.
CNBC…
“This represents the most serious outage the service has faced since its start in 2006.
The outage gives Microsoft an advantage in the online gaming space, as its Xbox Live service has not been compromised. Unlike Microsoft, which requires a $60 annual subscription fee for access to most features of its Xbox Live service, Sony does not charge most users for access to the PlayStation Network. (A PlayStation Plus program is available, giving early access to demos, priority invitations to game beta tests and discounts on products in its online store.)
That will prevent it from having to issue substantial refunds, but that might be small consolation to users who pay subscription fees to companies like Hulu Plus and Netflix, using the PS3 to view streaming content.”
163 you should become an IT guy and make a 100% safe network
167 will you help me >.>
163, where did the assumption come from that they didn’t have their system secured? do you realize that the person that did this had probably spent days, if not weeks hacking into their network? im sure it wasn’t easy, but with enough time, and blinding nerd rage that this person had, he was able to do it.
168 i would but it is impossible
Thank You Patrick for the update.
Ok people this is why you remove your credit info after you buy and something and a HERP DERP, IF YOU HAVENT BEEN CHARGED FOR ANYTHING YET, YOU’RE PROBABLY SAFE. Plus, how are you going to sue Sony for being hacked? That argument is laughable. And to the person who said
“75Million+ accounts of personal information/credit card information has been compromised or stolen!” Please learn to read then exercise your comprehensive skills. They didnt say 75 million, they hinted at the fact that you in particular could be affect. Not everyone together.
And if you’re going to act like you’re done with Sony then please, leave, because you’re selling [DELETED] and jumping to conclusions and 99% of those conclusions will end up being false and making you look like a [DELETED] seal in the middle of the Amazon Rain forest. So toodle-loo, [DELETED]
This is very messed up true, but people REMEMBER ONE THING!! Going to the xbox does not stop this from happening in the future. These are hackers, hackers have hacked the pentagon for christ sake. Do you really think your $50 a year would stop the xbox live from being hacked. NO!! We need to stop these hackers, because if they get mad at microsoft or just plain decide to compromise there system, who’s gonna stop them. NOBODY!! This sucks to the fifth degree true, but hacking has been going on for awhile and will not stop.
I just dont want to have to start paying to online because of this.
what if I have my credit card information stored but I’m not from the US???
You should have listen to me, they did this to me previous the last outage, and I lost $16 I had on my PSN wallet, I contacted Sony support, but still no answer yet.
Come on Sony! answer!
Thanks for waiting a week to tell me my personal data was stolen. In hindsight, was it really worth the trouble suing a small time hacker now that everyone’s identity is at risk? Looking forward to all class action law suits you may face and any litigation from the US and international governments
Congrats Sony. Your utter and complete failure this gen is now confirmed. Good job.
@147
>suing george hotz for ps3 exploit
His exploit made the CFW that was used to access the PSN Dev accounts possible
>raiding the houses of hackers and arresting them
Sony does not have their own police force. They present their evidence to the police and the local forces in Germany acted accordingly
>trying to hire a hacker to fight fire with fire (she refused because SONY’s treatment of hotz)
Interesting one. Got a source?
>SONY DEMANDING IP addresses of people who so much as glanced at a PS3 hack even if they just curious
They were trying to see how many of those were in California, so they could sue Hotz there.
>forcing customers to choose between OtherOS with no PSN or PSN with no OtherOS
Well, the hacking community was using OtherOS to try and get unsigned code to run the XMB. Sony was the only console maker to even allow that much leverage with the hardware. The hackers exploited that and ruined it for everyone.
>arrogant attitude with lies about why they do the things they do
What did they lie about?
>blaming anonymous for something they had nothing to do…
They never said this breach was done by anonymous.
One week, eh?
Well, ain’t that a b***h. That’s all I have to say about it.
stop blaming Sony blame the hackers who hacked the psn
anyways I’m glad I used psn cards and I do hope they make more secure and get it up ASAP
Really? You blame this on Sony? Most of you are just ignorant. Someone hacked PSN. ANYTHING is hackable. The only thing Sony can do is take very strong security measures. You shouldn’t get compensation because an idiot hacker, was being an idiot hacker.
Someone said “If my identity is stolen I am gona sue Sony” Really? Do I even have to say it? You can’t sue them. Who gave them that information? Its like if you let someone borrow your car, then that person is robbed at gunpoint and the criminal steals the car. Then you sue the person you let borrow the car. Its not his fault.
If you say you’re gona to get an Xbox, be my guest. In fact, I’ll hold the door for you. You’re the kind of person who ruins the PlayStation community. If you want an inferior console, go ahead. I’ll Play CoD without you cursing into your mic, enjoy LittleBigPlanet, play Portal 2 with Steam support, GoW, MAG, R&C, KZ3, MNR, GT5, Resistance, Uncharted, Sly……..what will you have? Halo, Gears, or Forza. BlTCH please! Just leave now.
@5: It’s been for a while…
Within a week? Aw, and all I need to platinum Portal 2 is most co-op trophies…
This isn’t hitting Sony near as hard as some would like to have you think in the big scheme of things either…
PlayStation Network Down: Financial Impact to Sony Minimal
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much money PlayStation Network generates each day from game and movie downloads, as Sony doesn’t typically divulge this data, but Pachter estimates that it’s a fairly small chunk compared to Sony’s global games business. The analyst called it a “small number,” adding, “Even if they do $1 billion a year (and I don’t think it’s close to that), it’s $3 million a day, and they only keep 30%.”
I personally find it quite difficult to “feel sorry” for Sony atm…
This can’t be good for business at all!!
I love my playstation don’t believe I would “switch” Too much invested in my ps3 psp, psp go , move ,eye,sharpshooter ,and not to mention all those annual subscripts to sony MLB,Plus,Music Unlimited. I just dont want to Pay More just to play, I hope this is resolved soon sony has a ton of awesome stuff coming out .
@176
PREACH IT BROTHER!
Hey guess what guys?
Now….IT ONLY DOES OFFLINE!