News: Some PSN Updates, Both Good and Bad News

Okay, the good news first. Sony has dropped the details on its complementary offering for its North America customers; started the final stages of their internal testing for their new system; and Sir Howard Stringer, Sony Corporation's CEO, President and Chairman (Wow) issues a "not so corporate" and friendly letter of apology to its clients. Bad news though, according to the latest update (I think you would not call it an update after this...), PSN will not be up soon in contrast to earlier announcements. (Sigh)


In an announcement in the official US PlayStation Blog, Patrick Seybold dropped the details of the complimentary offering of an enrollment to an identity theft protection program. According to the announcement, SCE and SNEI has partnered with Debix Inc. to offer AllClear ID Plus at no cost to PSN and Qriocity account holders for twelve months from program registration. Sony will be sending out activation emails to registered PSN and Qriocity members with a code that you will need for activating your AllClear ID program in the AllClear ID website. The package will include:

• Cyber Monitoring and Surveillance, a feature which alerts a registered user for exposure of user's personal data in the internet, and from information recovered by law enforcement.
• Priority access to licensed private investigators and identity restoration specialists. 
• Up to $1 Million identity theft insurance policy per user to provide additional protection to users who are found out to be victims of identity theft. The policy will cover identity restoration costs, legal defense expenses and lost wages within 12 months of the stolen identity incident.

As for European customers, a similar identity protection program is in the works according to Nick Caplin, Head of Communications, SCEE, and more details will be released in future announcements.

Also, Sony has began the final stages of its internal testing of their new system. On a May 5 post, Patrick Seybold revealed the said testing, but provided no further detail as to when the testing will be completed, and when the system will be back online. He mentioned that they are working around the clock to to restore the service, and at the same time, ensure that user data is secure.

In other news, Sir Howard Stringer, issues a friendly letter of apology to all users. In the letter, Sir Howard Stringer apologizes for the inconvenience caused by the outage and the attack, and reiterates earlier announcements of a "Welcome Back" program, and cites some details of the earlier mentioned complimentary offering. He also reexplains the cause of the delay of announcement of the theft. He also personally reassures the clients:


"In the coming days, we will restore service to the networks and welcome you back to the fun. I wanted to personally reach out and let you know that we are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability, protecting your information better than ever, and getting you back to what you signed up for – all the games and great entertainment experiences that you expect from Sony."

Last is the bad news. Yesterday, Patrick Seybold dropped the bomb in the latest blog post and mentioned that Sony is still working on confirming the security of its systems. He mentioned that Sony's utmost priority is security of the network, and announced that they will not be restoring the system unless security strength is proven. He mentioned that when they announced their estimate of when the system will be back online, they were still unaware of the extent of the attack on SOE and took the time to investigate further.

The outage is now nearing its third week. It's summer break here in the Philippines and I just hope the systems will be back online before the break ends. Sigh.