Not too long ago, the world was stunned to learn of a breach in security at Sony's PlayStation Network. Millions of customers were compromised as personal information was hacked into. Names, usernames, passwords and credit card numbers appeared online, ready for the highest bidder. The PlayStation Network was shut down for three weeks while Sony tried to fix the security problem.
Now, the PlayStation Network is up in the Canada, U.S. and Europe. (Japan won't let Sony re-boot the network until the government is certain Japanese consumers will be protected.)But is your information really safe? And what happens if your information was already leaked? In the U.S., Sony is offering a year of free identity theft insurance to PSN and Qriocity members. But no one else is getting any sort of protection.
Why Can't Canadians Have Free Identity Theft Protection, Too?
If you are a U.S. customer, Sony is ready to give some sort of protection. You can sign up to receive AllClear ID PLUS free for one year as a way to help you clean up your credit. That way, if your information is used to open a fraudulent account, you can have it cleaned up. While identity theft protection companies can't actually do something for you that you can't do for yourself, it does make it a little bit easier on you in that you don't have to spend the time to clean up the mess. Someone else does it for you.
It's a sort of weaksauce solution (what if a wily scammer holds on to the information for more than a year?), but at least it's something. But, what happens if I'm Canadian and someone steals my identity? What if my credit is trashed because of the PSN breach? Apparently, that doesn't matter to Sony.
Personally, though, I think that Sony should offer the ID theft protection to Canadians as well. Actually, Sony should probably extend the offer to all of its customers. After all, more than just Americans were affected. Plenty of us Canucks probably saw our credit card information compromised. Our names, addresses and email information are floating around out there, too.
C'mon Sony, show the rest of your customers some love. What about us Canucks?
Image source: PlayStation LifeStyle
This post was included in the Carnival of Wealth at Control Your Cash, and in the Canadian Finance Carnival at Canadian Personal Finance Blog.
I think Sony should definitely extend the offer to all of its customers. While the U.S. may have the larger number of customers, I do believe Sony needs to take responsibility for their security and provide protection to all it’s customers.
I wonder how many customers will want to trust Sony with their information in the future anyway? Security is a serious issue, and Sony needs to ensure that they definitely take huge steps to protect their customer’s information.