For a week now, Neowin has been actively reporting on Sony’s PlayStation Network as many gamers find that they’re unable to connect. As reported by Sony themselves, the reason for the downtime was because of an ‘external intrusion’ which caused Sony to take PSN offline and start to rebuild the system.
Although gamers everywhere were sad to see they couldn’t access the service, today Sony reported what has to be the biggest issue with the external intrusion. In a blog post on their website Sony claim that between April 17 and April 19, the account information of some PSN and Qriocity service users was compromised due to the intrusion.
As well as temporarily shutting down PSN and Qriocity services they have contacted a security firm so that they can conduct a full investigation into the matter. As previously reported by Neowin they also added that they have begun to rebuild their system in an attempt to enhance their security so that they don’t encounter a problem alike anywhere in the near future.
Unfortunately for its users, practically all of the information they have personally entered is at risk including name, address, country, email, birthdate, PSN/Qriocity login and password, PSN online ID and even a chance that your purchase history, billing address, password security answers and credit card number - along with expiration date may have been taken too.
Sony urges its users to be aware of any email, telephone and postal mail scams that may ask you for sensitive information as they will likely be a scam. Sony will not contact you in anyway in relation to the incident. Once PSN and Qriocity services are back online it would be a smart idea to change your account password in addition to any other websites that may have the same login/password.
The company stated that its users can expect to see some of the services back online within a week.
Image credit: Gaming Target