Thou Shalt Not Sue Sony

from the can't-let-people-have-rights dept

AC alerts us to a change in the new Sony PlayStation Network terms of service that basically says that you agree not to sue the company. Honestly (and Sony pointed this out in its defense), such clauses are pretty common. It is debatable how enforceable some of these clauses are, but they say that you have to go to arbitration, rather than sue. The terms also bar participating in class action lawsuits, which seems much more questionable. Where Sony gets ridiculous is in claiming that this change "is designed to benefit both the consumer and the company by ensuring that there is adequate time and procedures to resolve disputes." That makes me think of a two syllable word whose first four letters are bull. Come on. At this point, everyone knows that binding arbitration between a company and a consumer wildly favors companies. A study from a few years back found that companies win in arbitration against consumers 95% of the time. Sony knows this. So its move is not about protecting consumers at all, and it's insulting for it to imply that it is.

Filed Under: arbitration, playstation, playstation network, psn, terms of service
Companies: sony

Sony's Insurer Says It Shouldn't Have To Pay For Cost Of PlayStation Network Hack

from the sony-swims-alone dept

Butcherer79 points to even more problems for Sony in the aftermath of the massive hacking of the PlayStation Network. It seems that Sony was expecting its insurance provider, Zurich American Insurance, to cover any costs. Zurich American Insurance apparently has other ideas:

Zurich American Insurance has now gone to court in New York seeking a declaration that it does not have to help Sony with current or future legal action related to the data breach.

Legal papers filed by Zurich reveal that 55 separate class action lawsuits are pending in the US because of the breach.

Sony has indicated that it expected Zurich to cover any such fees, but Zurich is saying no way, no how. Apparently, Zurich says that its contract with Sony doesn't even cover the parts of the business that were hacked, and other clauses in the deal show that this isn't Zurich's problem at all.

Filed Under: hack, insurance, lawsuits, playstation, playstation network
Companies: sony, zurich american insurance

Lawsuits And Laws On The Way In Response To Sony Data Breach

from the but-would-any-of-them-have-stopped-this? dept

With Sony admitting that its PlayStation Network was hacked and that lots of personal info was accessed, you knew the reaction would be swift. Within a day we have class action lawsuits being filed and new laws being proposed. I agree that it was monumentally stupid of Sony to store passwords as plaintext rather than as hashes, which certainly leaves room for negligence claims, but will laws really make a difference? About the only reasonable response from a government official has been White House cyber boss Howard Schmidt (who has a history of being more reasonable than many of his colleagues), who noted that getting hacked is a risk of doing business, and it's not worth overreacting to Sony's situation:

"It's still a situation where specific incidents make it something it's not," he said. "Things make headlines that are just the risk of doing business in many cases."

But, of course that won't satisfy the class action lawyers or the politicians who are all over this. Beyond the plans to introduce laws, we've already seen that Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was a massive grandstander as Connecticut Attorney General, has continued his grandstanding ways with a public "demand for answers" from Sony.

Filed Under: class action lawsuits, data breach, grandstanding, playstation network
Companies: sony

Sony Admits That Playstation Hacker Got Tons Of Info, Including Passwords

from the this-is-what-you-get-with-a-company-that-rootkits-people dept

We had avoided discussing what was going on with the PlayStation Network hack and subsequent downtime until more details were known, and now Sony is finally revealing what many people feared: a ton of personal info was leaked. According to Sony's blog post, among the information that hackers got was:

• Name
• Address
• Country
• Email
• Birthdate
• PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login

Sony claims it's not sure yet, but that it "cannot rule out," that credit card info and password security answers may have also been included. To deal with that, they're saying people should assume that such info was compromised. So far, Sony's plan is to tell you to stay alert:

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:

You hear that sound? That's the sound of a whole bunch of class action lawsuits being filed against Sony as we speak. I'd like to say it's a huge surprise that Sony would even store passwords and credit card data in a place where it could easily be extracted like that, but it's really not. This, after all, is the company that made the word "rootkit" famous, and spent the last few months wasting more resources in a quixotic legal campaign against a guy who added back a feature to the PS3 that Sony had deleted. Perhaps if it spent a little more time actually protecting its users rather than fighting silly battles, there wouldn't be issues like this.

Filed Under: credit cards, passwords, playstation, playstation network, security
Companies: sony