Security

PSN Users Get Identity Theft Protection

It took a few weeks, but Sony is making good on its promise of free identity protection to Playstation Network users.

The service, good for one year, is offered through AllClearID PLUS, and is available to anyone who activated a PSN account before April 20. To get the service, enter your e-mail at Sony's identity theft protection page. Within 72 hours, you'll get an activation code, which must be redeemed at AllClear's website by June 28. The AllClear package includes $1 million of identity theft insurance, cyber monitoring and other perks.

The Playstation Network was hacked between April 17 and April 19, forcing Sony to shut down the network for four weeks. Nearly a week after confirming the outage, Sony revealed the full extent of the damage: Hackers stole names, e-mails, addresses, birthdates and passwords. There was no evidence of credit card theft on the Playstation Network, but a separate attack on Sony Online Entertainment resulted in the theft of 12,700 credit card numbers. All but 900 were expired, Sony said.

At this point, I wonder how many people are going to take Sony up on the identity theft protection offer. Judging from the reader reaction here and on other blogs, there was a strong sentiment of "I don't care about the data, just let me play Call of Duty again." Sony began restoring Playstation Network services on May 14, although the Playstation Store for downloadable content remains down until the end of this month.