14 DAY TRIAL // Sony's recent problems with its PlayStation Network and the fact that personal user data from all of the 70+ million users might have fallen into the hands of hackers have attracted the attention of both an U.S. senator as well as an UK data protection group.
Sony has been going through one of its blackest periods in the last week, as after a hacker attack, it made the decision to take its PlayStation Network service offline, so that the perpetrators couldn't do any more harm.
After almost a week in which it declined to offer any real reason for the move, Sony admitted yesterday that hackers might have stolen personal user data, from names or addresses to even credit card information.
As you can imagine, this delay attracted quite a lot of attention from all media outlets.
What's even worse is that a U.S. Senator, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has issued an open letter to Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton, in which he demands to know why the company didn't announce that personal user data had been compromised last week.
"When a data breach occurs, it is essential that customers be immediately notified about whether and to what extent their personal and financial information has been compromised," the senator said in his letter.
"PlayStation Network users deserve more complete information on the data breach, as well as the assurance that their personal and financial information will be securely maintained. I appreciate your prompt response on this important issue."
Things are also pretty bad across the Atlantic, as IndustryGamers reveals that in the United Kingdom, the Information Commissioner's Office, a government body that upholds data privacy, has revealed that it is making inquiries with Sony to know just what type of incident it experienced and whether it broke the law by having a vulnerable security system.
According to a spokesperson for ICO, the group "takes data protection breaches extremely seriously. Any business or organization that is processing personal information in the U.K. must ensure they comply with the law, including the need to keep data secure."
"We have recently been informed of an incident which appears to involve Sony. We are contacting Sony and will be making further inquiries to establish the precise nature of the incident before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken by this office."
Sony recently answered a lot of questions about the PSN outage, and revealed that it took time to see just what damage the hackers had done and didn't know until yesterday if confidential user data was compromised.