And The First Lawsuit Against Sony Rolls In
Less than a day after the company announced that personal information from their PlayStation Network was compromised, Sony received notice that a class-action lawsuit had been filed against them. The lawsuit was filed by the Rothken Law Firm yesterday in a California court. The logistics of the suit say that Sony “failed to take reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure private and sensitive data.” Of course, we all knew this was coming.
Sony issued a statement on Monday saying that they believe an unauthorized person intruded their network, obtaining PSN user information. This information consists of everything from birthdays and addresses to credit card information and passwords. While the company said that there was no evidence that credit card information was actually taken, they aren’t ruling it out as a possibility.
Ira P. Rothken, an attorney at the law firm issued a personal statement about the suit, saying that they, “brought this lawsuit on behalf of consumers to learn the full extent of Sony PlayStation Network data security practices and the data loss and to seek a remedy for consumers. We are hopeful that Sony will take this opportunity to learn from the network vulnerabilities, provide a remedy to consumers who entrusted their sensitive data to Sony, and lead the way in data security best practices going forward.”
The case’s co-counselor stated that, “Sony’s breach of its customers’ trust is staggering. Sony promised its customers that their information would be kept private. One would think that a large multinational corporation like Sony has strong protective measures in place to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of personal information, including credit card information. Apparently, Sony doesn’t.”
Going further, the lawsuit seeks monetary compensation for the data loss as well as the “loss of use of the Sony PlayStation Network, credit monitoring, and other relief according to proof.” Whether or not the compensation will see its way to all PSN users has yet to be verified. Sony has yet to issue a statement in response.
