Sony Agrees To Pay £250,000 Over 2011’s PSN Hack

Timely. After our recent two-year anniversary post, detailing what happened with 2011’s now famous PSN hack, Sony have agreed to pay the ICO £250,000.

The incident, which TNW say “compromised millions of users’ account details” caused the PSN to be down for almost two months, leaving a lot of PSN users unhappy and some losing their trust in Sony completely.

Sony initially appealed the decision, hoping to avoid the fine but now have reluctantly agreed to pay up, influenced by the fact they would have to provide details relating to their security system which they did not wish to share.

Their argument was that the company was the real victim of the attack, and that there was no evidence that credit card details were ever in danger, though the hackers still managed to access millions of names, birth dates, email addresses and even passwords.

David Smith, the Deputy Commissioner and Director of Data Protection said that Sony “should have known better” and that they’re “a company that trades on its technical expertise, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they had access to both the technical knowledge and the resources to keep this information safe.”

9 Comments

  1. So what happens to this money then? Does it line the pockets of some fat man in a suit?

  2. Personally i think they have got off lightly. I lost ALOT of respect for Sony after that. I had thousands taken from my account after this incident and although I got it back, I wont trust Sony with my details again.

  3. probably best to just draw a line under the whole thing.

    just pay the fine, and try and ensure this never happens again.

    it’ll cost them a quarter of a million quid, but what would it cost them if people were reminded of the hack every so often while they were appealing?
    probably couldn’t put a price on it.

    • Exactly, which is why the fine is peanuts. The actual cost to Sony in terms of reputation and fixing the problem would be hundreds of millions and this is taken in to account.

  4. I don’t understand the fine – it’s not like the proceeds will go to any affected parties, it just looks like a cash-grab on the part of the ICO.

  5. Fined for being hacked? Isn’t that like a rape victim having to pay the assaulter?

    • Yes. It is, but this is the screwed up world we live in, where lawyers always win.

Comments are now closed for this post.