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
TURRICAN-808
I expect the Information Comissioner to follow suit or just simply fine Sony, rightfully too as potentially our data hasn’t been protected.
Tuffcub
He’s a See You Next Tuesday. And needs a good kicking, bloody scounger. Bloody whiney, moany fucks who think they’re owed everything.
dude90
Lol
MaD dOctoR 79
agree 100%
PoorPaddy89
Too damn right. Whilst I wouldn’t disagree with what he says, it’s simply a lawsuit culture which I’m happy to say isn’t as bad over here. Disgusting behaviour. If he’d actively been been damaged by Sony’d failure then fair enough, I’m behind you 100%. But this is bullshit.
GTRsannin
Americans have an awful lot of warning labels even in their cars all i’m saying
hazelam
yeah because sony potentially losing his information that could be used to clean out his account and not telling him for a week is totally just a petty little thing right?
whatever the guy’s motives, if sony didn’t do enough to protect his information then they’re liable.
if they did though, then they’ll win and this guy will get nothing.
i could understand the attitude to this guy if he was suing over bugs in a game, but when it has to do with his personal information being stolen and sony not telling people that and also doubt whether they did enough to actually protect that information, and you’d have to be the most blinkered fanboy to deny the possibility that they didn’t do enough after they finally admitted that the information may have actually been stolen, with those two things this is a crucial issue to most people who use the psn.
but yeah, this guy’s just greedy and the security of our information isn’t that important, certainly not worth suing over, right? o_o
GTRsannin
But that’s the thing nobody knows if Sony knew about it earlier or not
blarty
The key word there, hazelam, is ‘potentially’ – currently, bar access to the PSN, this guy has lost absolutely nothing, and if Sony, in their storage of credit card details and other information have complied with all relevant Data protection laws, then this guy is a bit premature on the lawsuit front.
Remember security breaches can take many forms…. as disgruntled ex-employee with a point to prove, for example
Broonba
Aye, me too. The guy sounds like a total fuckwitt…….he would probably try and sue himself, if he cut himself shaving.
TURRICAN-808
If this hacking saga gets turned into a movie, will Sony Pictures distribute it?
cam the man
I would rather Sony spent the money on beefing up security than give everyone affected a few quid or spend money on fighting lawsuits.
Bankzy108
Haha, he shoots…he rims it..and it falls out!
Nice try ;)
Joe
i think kristopher johns needs to get a real job…
Foxhound_Solid
Its not Sony fault – fucking gold digging fucking aresholes. chase the hackers not Sony.
Wankers.
blarty
Qu’elle surprise! American without access to full information files a lawsuit against something….. and this is news?
The only fact about the data theft… is we don’t have all the facts about the data theft…. if someone gets your password and it is encrypted… they still have your password even if they can’t use it. We don’t even know if there was any inside job going.
Re: Linux Kernel – 2 yrs old…. of course everyone still stores everything in flat files in /var still! I do so wish people with no idea of Sony’s infrastructure would stop making claims about knowing Sony’s infrastructure….. it’s getting boring now. I’m not defending Sony, on the contrary, I think they’ve made a monumental mess of things, however, I’m also not running round spouting unsubstantiated rubbish like a complete pleb.
Someone made a claim yesterday on Arstechnica that Sony were ‘clearly’ storing your name and credit card details in an unencrypted cleartext file, and proceeded to show said contents….. which were actually the contents of an HTTP url query part, that for all they know is being sent via https.