Surprise: Sony faces class action lawsuit on PlayStation Network breach

Sony hasn’t yet recovered from the PlayStation Network outage, but it has already been hit with a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of an angry user. The suit comes a day after Sony admitted that personal information, including credit card data, had been compromised when hackers broke into its online entertainment service.

The PlayStation Network has more than 77 million registered users, and the data breach is one of the worst in hacking history. Sony said an external attack compromised user information, including names, addresses, birthdays, login passwords, and possibly credit card information.

“We 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,” said Ira P. Rothken an attorney who filed the class action complaint.

“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,” said J.R. Parker, co-counsel in the case.

The suit was filed in U.S. district court in San Francisco on behalf of user Kristopher Johns. It alleges breach of warranty, negligent data security, violation of consumer rights to privacy and other charges. For sure, you can now add legal costs to the estimated damages that have resulted from the security breach.

The suite seeks monetary compensation for the data loss and loss of access to the network, credit monitoring costs, and other relief.

Sony hasn’t yet commented on the lawsuit.

[image credit: Gamefront]