PSN down, will Sony prevail?

As some of you may already know Sony's Playstation Network has been down since last Wednesday. Sony announced on it's blog that "An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services." There have been all kind of rumours around this news. First and maybe the biggest rumour being that it was the work of the almighty Anonymous, but I think that by now they can be left out. They have also stated that they didn't do it. Some other minor rumours claim that Admin Dev accounts were breached and that a custom firmware which allows the use of fake credit card info was released. The real reason might be some combination or it might be something totally else.

This is a huge setback for Sony as one of their assets compared to Xbox 360 is that online gaming is free. Now you can't play at all whether you pay or not. Xbox Live as it is is considered to be much better than Sony's system, so this really is like a kick in the nuts for Sony. Multiplayer being a big thing at the moment one can only guess how this will affect Sony and their image. For me this ain't so big deal as I play only offline. The only thing that is bothering me is that I can't upload my trophies. (If my PS3 breaks down now I'll go berserk!) I also think that Sony should compensate this incident somehow. Of course it might not be their fault, but still there are people who can't play their favorite games at all. It would be a smart move for Sony to for example give away a little game for free after they get the store up and running again. That would surely help to protect the image. Whatever they might do, for their sake I hope they will solve this problem as soon as possible.

Now a little story that came to my mind when I read about those rumours.

The news of breached accounts scared me a little, but I have a good reason for that. A year or two ago my PSN account was hacked and the hacker f*ucked me up a little. Only a little because I survived with only small financial losses. I also have to admit that part of what happened was my own fault. At that time I had the same password at almost all the places where you needed one. You might guess what happened. My PSN account is hacked -> the hacker has access to my email -> the hacker has access to pretty much everywhere where I have registered. I was lucky that the person who did this was either very stupid or a real gamer. He bought all the Crash Bandicoot games from PSN store and also bought a 12 months Xbox Live Gold membership, but nothing else. I was like WTF when I found that out. He had access to all my online store accounts (which also had my credit card info saved there) but no. Well that's good for me. Of course I had some trouble getting my gmail account back. You have to remember when you opened the account and some other random stuff, but after several frustrating attemps I succeeded. And by the way if you're still wondering, of course I changed my credit card after what happened.

Internet is serious business.

I made a complaint to Sony about what happened and the answer was pretty much "too bad", no money back or store credit or anything. I made the same complaint to Microsoft about that Gold membership and they first said that "sure you'll get your money back" and few days later came email saying "on second thought, you get nothing." It's so easy to f*ck the little consumer. I guess I'd have had my money back from the credit card company or the bank, but because the total amount was so small and because I hate the paper work needed to make a formal reclamation I didn't even try.

So boys and girls what did we learn here today? Don't have the same password on every site. You beg for trouble that way. I just got lucky.