Google Trends data has a registered a 277 per cent increase in “delete PlayStation account” searches following an alleged data breach earlier this week. A ransomware group claimed to have “successfully compromised all of Sony’s systems”, with the stolen data purportedly up for sale. The Japanese giant has responded by insisting it’s investigating the situation.
But despite there being no confirmation of a leak, it seems concerned customers are already taking steps to protect their personal security, with the aforementioned search data suggesting many gamers are eager to close their accounts in the aftermath. While a 277 per cent increase in search traffic does seem alarming, it’s worth noting we don’t know how many queries this data actually entails.
Sony obviously was put through the wringer over a decade ago, when a PSN data breach saw its entire online network brought offline. This prompted the organisation to make a number of goodwill gestures, including offering free security support and several games as compensation. Unsurprisingly, it also beefed up its security behind-the-scenes.
Comments 41
Everyone should set up their Google account to search for compromised passwords. I haven't had any passwords associated with Sony breached but it's worth doing amidst all this
Removed - unconstructive feedback
I just changed my password and activated 2FA after the news of the breach.
Taking futile steps you mean. Its like installing air bags after the collision occurred in your car. Locking your front door after you've been robbed. Closing your bank account after the bank has been cleaned out.
Damage is done. Showing there is no shortage of stupid people in the world.
If it's that much of an issue, get an identity theft kit from one of the many providers and talk to your credit card company about a reissue as the card number is now compromised. That's it. Nothing else you can do. Deleting your psn account does nothing to protect you at this point.
@theMEGAniggle or you know, always use two factor identification and keep unique passwords for anything without it.
I wonder how many of these people have used the same data on smaller company sites that don't get reported because they are small.
@NotSoCryptic agreed, just offering a solution for those to see if anything has been breached
Well I don't put personal banking information on psn so I'm good and I change my password every now and and then also use the 2 factor authentication people it's a security feature
@BeerIsAwesome Aww come onnnnn!
Why would you do thaaaaaaaaaat???? 😫🫠
2fa on everything where ya can
Legally in the UK as soon as they are aware of a breach they have to inform the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) within 72 hours (3 days).
If the breach has a high risk of containing customer data they must also inform those individuals without undue delay, which is more subjective.
Sony have said they are “currently investigating the situation, and we have no further comment at this time.” so the 72 hour clock may not have started until they can confirm if a breach happened and if so to what extent. But we will know soon enough.
The titles of the articles on this website are often so complex that I don’t know how to read them. Perhaps it’s because I’m not native, but normally I have no trouble with the language at all.
@Darude84 Haha, fair feedback. Will keep that in mind!
Lead no doubt by social media "influencers" who know nothing yet have a friendly voice that makes it sound as if they do.
@get2sammyb I see this too. It's more because the Headlines Capitalise Every Word In The Sentence And This Makes It More Difficult To Read Than It Should. Especially When Referencing Game Titles, Publisher Names And So Forth, All In The Same Sentence.
(sorry for being 'that guy' - just personal preference).
@themightyant exactly and if there has been anyone affected, they need to be informed, again, as promptly as possible. As a DPO, this is one of the 'worst' parts of my job.
But it needs to to happen, so the data subjects can reasonably respond to the information as quickly as possible.
We are still none the wiser if there has been any confirmed breach and if Sony are keeping silent when they know otherwise, without informing any affected data subjects, then that's not good. Especially if this has the potential to affect people across multiple countries.
@Wiggo I accidentally deleted my 2FA key last week had to wait in a queue 6hrs to get it reset 😩 missed my turn and had to go again. Thank god it wasn’t a real queue but don’t sleep on it…
Hey Google, Delete my PlayStation Account!
@michaelf Yes, I think that is the problem. Because of the capitals you can’t distinguish the titles from the other words. Now my mind sees a collection of words instead of a sentence.
@michaelf The reality, having been in this position before with some small and some bigger organisations, is that it can take some time to first establish if there has in fact been a breach.
We had one where the "hacker" was asking for big cash but it turned out someone had only lost a USB stick with low or no-encryption and the "breach" was comparatively very minor. They had been bluffing and wanted a quick pay-out. The initial reports on this Sony one suggested this might be more likely than they have full access as they claimed. The hackers "proof of hack" was reportedly pretty lame and they were perhaps also trying to get a quick pay off.
Even if there is a hack it can then take a bit of time to establish what data was exposed. You need to do this due diligence, which can take time. The clock only really starts ticking once they are sure if there is a breach, not when the hacker announces it.
@Darude84 To be fair I struggled with this title and had to click on the article to find out what it was all about. Well played @get2sammyb lol
But slightly more seriously a couple of quotes or inverted commas, depending on your style guide, would have made this much more readable.
@themightyant absolutely. I agree with everything that you're saying. I have to deal with this type of event as my day job, and if there is no investigations, due diligence carried out to confirm what is being said, then I'd not be doing my job.
In this particular instance, I'd be not taking the Hacker's "proof" as gospel whatsoever, however I would be having my Cyber Team carrying out forensic work and reviewing logs et al to determine if there's any shred of evidence in their claim.
The question is why is there an outdated photo of Declan Rice at the top?
To the organization who ends up buying my info have fun with my highschool email and a card that doesn't have money since 2019 (and it's already expired) LOL. Prepaid psn cards ftw.
@NotSoCryptic This probably isn't a brute force or dictionary search attack. I don't think 2FA would really impact it. If it was, a bunch of people would've been alerted to the attempts at a breach via texts and such. That, or they bypassed 2FA which is very possible even if it isn't necessarily easy (MITM attacks as one example).
I don't even know if this revolves around the accounts themselves, but rather the leaks of PII from a database, or something of the sort. 2FA won't protect you from that.
Yeah my card actually expires next month and I already planned to change it tomorrow so I'm good
Joke is on them if they hack my account again, the bank closed my PlayStation credit card which is the one linked to my account b/c I hadn’t used it in like a year. I suppose at some point I’ll have to link a new one but I’m not getting another PS card, screw’em.
When this happened to Nintendo a few years ago I deleted my credit card information from my Nintendo account and changed my password and carried on as usual but it’s nice to see that there’s still a number of people out there that have the absolute dumbest response possible
@SystemAddict
Dang. What a pain in the backside.
Hope you get it sorted soon
Would appreciate less pictures of Declan Rice in the future, not quite over his departure just yet
If people would just use 2FA its almost impossible to break into your accounts. Even with these data breaches. They are praying on people with poor password management.
I had to read this title numerous times before having a clue what it was trying to say. Please use quotes or italics or bold or SOMETHING to make these kind of titles more readable.
I'm not that concerned, as I have 2FA on my PSN and all other accounts where that's an option, unique passwords and only use gift card balance on my games accounts. The main accounts you really want to protect are emails, as they can be used to reset passwords etc. on multiple accounts.
Data breaches are an unfortunate, repeated reality of being online, all you can really do is secure your data with strong passwords & 2FA, or change email associated with account if someone repeatedly attempts to gain access.
For example I don't really use Facebook and it was even locked for a while when I tried to remove attached phone number (which I'd only attached to re-gain access on initial lockout). But I have access again and kept getting notified of someone trying to change the password. So despite having 2FA, I also changed the email and have stopped being pestered.
Also while Sony may have been "hacked", I suspect its nowhere near the level of the 2011 PSN hack, or the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.
@Mythologue We're on the same page believe me. I don't think this is anything more than some of sony's documents being pulled if any at all. This isn't even being reported as PlayStation being impacted. Most of those systems are pretty isolated to begin with.
Even if they did the encryption on a lot of what is there, credit card numbers, etc still need the users password to be able to do anything with it. Even the password isn't a striaght string.
If you really want to be blind to what someone else is doing with your data, then 2FA and unique passwords are the way to go. Also being very caustious with your security questions. I don't even answer with the right birthdate when setting a lot of that stuff up.
But I'm paranoid. At least I can rest peacefully knowing someone won't just use the last 4 digits of my social to get into my accounts lol.
Already changed my password and have 2FA. I'm not overly concerned.
Those people are going to be shocked when they can't play their games anymore.
@fido 2FA that's with the text message stuff isn't it? Yeah I have do that ages ago but I'm going to change my password just to be certain.
Watch the lemmings run.
Lol so random that you put a picture of Declan Rice! 😂
I think @get2sammyb is in to his “Fifa” this year.
@Flaming_Kaiser That's right. However I used an authenticator app instead of SMS.
Well, the deadline has passed, and no publishing of the data, as far as I can tell, so…what did these douchebags actually accomplish, if anything?
Why would I delete my PSN account of over 10 years? When I can just simply change my email password and 2FA and it's as good as new.
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