40 
Ouch, talk about putting the boot in. The Information Commissioner’s Office has decided that Sony should have done more to prevent all that PSN hacking back in 2011, which saw millions of users details, including credit cards and addresses, compromised. It’s slapped Sony with a huge £250,000 fine.
While Sony has apologised over and over again, it still dropped the ball when it came to network security. ICO came to the conclusion that:
“If you are responsible for so many payment card details and log-in details then keeping that personal data secure has to be your priority. In this case that just didn’t happen, and when the database was targeted – albeit in a determined criminal attack – the security measures in place were simply not good enough.”
To be fair, I’m pretty sure most people came to that conclusion, and what’s more, people actually assume that the company you’re giving your personal and payment details to actually knows what its doing regarding securing that very private information. Hell, even I had to go out and cancel my damn credit cards, which was an absolute pain in the arse, and as a result, Sony’s not getting my credit card details ever again.
The irony is that, in the most litigious place in the world, America, a judge threw out a lawsuit over the PSN breach, saying there’s no such thing as perfect security. While that’s probably true, it seems us Brits think it should have been a damn sight tougher at the very least. [ICO via TechRadar]
Image credit: NME.
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£250,000?!?
It should have been £1 for every single piece of personal information that was compromised – £1 per name, £ per address, £1 per credit card no, etc….
£1? Why not more?
I do agree that £250,000 is a little low, especially with what was lost.
Scale – In the same way as the Samsung damages against Apple were awarded, they shouldn’t be punitive but representative of the potential losses incurred.
It would also depend though, as to whether the ICO is ruling based on the overall hack or the affected UK users.
Ahh I see. It may just be based on affected UK users as you said.
I stil lthink it should have been more.
Considering ICO’s remit is just Blighty, I presume it’s just for Brits caught up in the mess.
Two things…
1. £250,000 is peanuts to a company like sony. They probably spend more on toilet role per year.
2. The case in America (as far as I remember) was not so much about the fact that there was a security breach but that they didn’t tell people about it for a long time AND that they changed the terms of service of using PSN. If you didn’t sign the new terms of service you could no longer use PSN. This was clearly a violation of customer’s rights to use a product that they own, in the way it was sold to them, without having to agree to different terms of service at a later date. It was (Idiotically) dismissed because sony managed to argue that it was just a free service therefore they can do what they want with it, including take it away if they want to. By the same argument any part of the console can be “free”.
role = roll *NEED EDIT BUTTON*
Oooohhh.$250,000. So what? To Kaz, that’s one less ivory backscratcher.
Weird, I realised I’d put $ and changed it to £. :S Edit button plz.
I hope I can sense the sarcasm in the topic title…..
I think it perhaps should read:
Sony Gets a Poultry £250,000 Slap Across the Face For That PSN Hacking Mess
Yes, I’m aware of the spelling, I want to see those in charge of Sony’s cyber security division assaulted with a quarter of a million pounds worth of chicken.
^^ This
For a company posting yearly losses of billions upon billions, £250,000 is the least of their worries.
Did anyone actually lose any money over this mess? For the sheer amount of data compromised you’d expect to see stories of people having their accounts emptied or massive bills ran up on their credit cards. I’ve seen nothing reported to say that it’s happened. I never cancelled any of my cards and my account is fine. Also I can’t remember seeing any news on the ICO fining various government departments for leaving USB drives on trains.
Spot on mate.