A gentleman from Birmingham, Alabama has put in the first legal claim against Sony via the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He is hoping his case will be awarded Class Action status so that the complaints of other consumers will be added to its weight.
Kristopher Johns is claiming that Sony did not take “reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure the private and sensitive data of its users.” He states that because Sony didn’t warn consumers sooner, they might suffer greater financial damage because they weren’t given the opportunity to make their own decision about closing accounts and cancelling cards.
Johns is claiming for monetary compensation as well as free credit card status monitoring. If his case is awarded Class Action Status it could potentially mean a rather large group of consumers, although undoubtedly substantially fewer than the 75 million accounts, are entitled to join the case and benefit from any future entitlements it yields.
In a country with such a widespread culture of litigation, it’s hardly surprising that it hasn’t taken too long for the first lawsuit to be filed. We wouldn’t be surprised to see similar suits in Europe fairly soon either.
Source: CNet
Greek-BBQ
If sony do get sued this will be another blow for them. I presume that the earthquake and tsunami affected them, but now their reputation is getting thrown down the drain. I know this hack could’ve probably happened to xbox & other random stuff, but the way most people will view the situation is that Sony have little protection over peoples details and have little care about their customers.
Darth Newdar
I don’t see a great possibility of Sony being in trouble in a legal sense… they’ve covered their backs with their terms and conditions, and no computer system, however well designed, is impervious to hacks. Just a danger of living in a world of digital information.
Greek-BBQ
Yeah I was worried before about digital information but this had just made the blow. My parents don’t use credit/debit cards because they always suspect things like this will happen. I always thought, if a code is designed by a human, it can be broken by a human. Only a matter of time before hackers finally get there. I don’t dislike many people, except Hitler, the indian guy from the series heroes etc (LOL), but hackers have been shoved near, if not to the top of my dislike list.
baska
people need to understand that shit things do happen, and if everyone takes advantage of a mistake, then all good things will end. if there is any wrong doing as a result of this problem and credit card details do get used by fraudsters then there are other measures in place with Banks, Insurance companies etc that will resolve any financial loss.Its because of opportunist that good companies go under. i have a PSN account, and if i do end up being a victim of credit card fraud as a result of this PSN hack, then i will take steps to recovery money the right way and not to use this as an excuse to financial gain. this so called gentleman from Birmingham, Alabama, is effectively as bad as any person who commits any form of fraud. A fraudster will take advantage of any situation they can to personally gain at the expense of others. anyone who creates a litigation case who in fact may not have lost anything regarding credit card details, but is looking for personal financial compensation is in my books a person who has found a way financially profit from someone else’s pocket. I hope this so called gentleman from Birmingham, Alabama never makes a mistake in his life, my money is, that’s he has made many and will continue to make many mistakes. lets hope know one draws up a litigation case on him.
minerwilly
Very well put Baska , couldnt agree more .
BIGAL-1992
Grab the popcorn, it’s showtime!
gordon_strange
Apparently kaz is doing a hip hop parady video in response to this…
deadwelsh
American Sues Company SHOCKER!!!!
This whole thing hasn’t been ideal, but i for one am going to stick with Sony, if anything it means we will get a beefier network with probably the best security their money will buy.
Wake me up when this has finished please
matt612
Really? i love how this whole situation could happen to any company in the world that have a network storing bank information even, dare i say it…….Microsoft. But this happens to Sony and suddenly there not careful/secure enough? Right.
hazelam
people would be saying the same thing if it happened to ms or anybody.
but it happened to sony.
i don’t think the “it could happen to ms too” defence will carry much weight in court.
dude90
This is really taking the p*s* now, nobody these days have any patience.
InternationalGamer
I like how he states that he wasnt warned sooner, yeah, Hackers always tell when they will hack because they think Sony should warn its users.
Kovacs
His point is that Sony knew sooner and hence he should have been contacted sooner.
Voganlight
But did they really?
GTRsannin
When you read peoples comments all over it’s like Sony left a door open for the hackers on purpose saying come on in the thing is nobody knows how good their protection was it might have been the best there is and hackers broke it cause that is what hackers do and another thing is what kind of a bubble do people live in thinking anything is safe is just stupid this is kind of like you park your car in a parking lot and go to a market it’s not a 100% certainty that your car is still there when you get back