Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I'm so happy I lied to them

I just got mail from the PlayStation Network:
Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:
1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;
2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
3) Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, to be on the safe side we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.
Fortunately for me the PlayStation Network is not very user friendly even if it works. When I created my account, it asked me what country I was living in. It turned out that if I said the truth, Belgium, I could only run the Playstation Network in Dutch or French. I really didn't want that, but the only way to get the thing to run in English was to pretend that I lived under a fictious address in the UK. That caused all sorts of hassle later, as then of course I couldn't use my credit card, but had to buy game cards to load up my PSN wallet and buy games. And bizarrly the Playstation Network account management doesn't allow you to change which country you live in, thus if you move to a different country you can't update your address.

But in consequence the PSN hackers got a fake address from me, and no credit card data. Enjoy!

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