Sony today announced that friends lists and trophy data are unaffected by the PSN Network outage. The news will come as a big relief to gamers, some of whom have spent months and years building up their achievements. Sony has also said it hopes to have some parts of the network back up and running by May 3rd, that would be almost two weeks after the initial outage.
In another crumb of comfort for gamers Sony has said it will do something special for its customers for their, ’extraordinary patience’. It will have to be something momentous if they have any hope of turning around this PR disaster.
Currently Sony has found no evidence that credit card data has been stolen (data it claims was encrypted in contrast to other data such as names and addresses). The safest policy at this stage would be to check your bank statements for any unusual activity.
Sony may now face a large penalty fine from the UK information commissioner’s office for failing to secure customer information such as names and addresses. However, given the maximum fine is only £500,000, it is likely to be the least of the technology giant’s worries.
Speculation remains rife as to who was behind the attack. Currently the consensus view among experts is that major criminals are responsible, given its huge scale.