Good Bye Sony Playstation and good riddance · 8:44pm Jun 22nd, 2016
Well, after 20 years of being a loyal and diehard Sony Playstation customer/player, we have parted ways and I have joined the Xbox family; this change was not a pleasant one either. About 2 weeks ago, my PlayStationNetwork account that I have had for 10 years now and which had close to $800 in digital games attached to it was compromised and taken over. What is angering and ultimately led me to abandoning Playstation all together is 1) The takeover was not a hack – I have a purposefully complex password, upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols – to protect myself and I do not share this with anyone; even my husband and kids. It was caused by a so-called “help” feature Sony has in place that in my opinion is a huge security issue & 2) Sony did virtually nothing to help me recover the account and appeared to me to support the person who compromised my PSN account.
Here is how the takeover takes place (and Twitter is lit up over the last few weeks with people that have been hit with takeovers from this process.): 1 – someone on your friends list (yes, I have kids that like to friend everyone on the planet) contacts Sony via either the in-game system Help Menu for Playstation Network or online at the Playstation Network website help menu and says that their “friend” (you) has forgotten their password and cannot get to their email or game system and requests help in resetting their “friends” password. Sony calls this the “Friend Recovery” system. 2 – Sony asks the “friend” a series of questions based to verify of which the majority can be answered just by viewing the victim’s PSN profile. Once answered properly, Sony proceeds to reset your password which now allows the perpetrator to log into your PSN account (PSN ID is your email which is visible on your PSN profile page that anyone on your friends list can view). 3 – Once the takeover artist logs into your account, they proceed to change your email. You are now locked out of your PSN account. 4 – The takeover artist will check to see if you have a method of payment attached to your PSN account (I had my PayPal linked); if you do, they will charge EXACTLY $150 worth of fraud to the payment method (Sony has a policy that they will not contest up to $150 worth of chargebacks per PSN account if claimed as fraud) and will then switch the recorded payment method (this is on purpose as you will see later).
When you contact Sony after you discover your account has been taken over and possibly $150 in fraud charges, Sony Support will say they are happy to help recover your account and says they have to identify you first. They start by asking you for the original email the PSN account was created with. If you remember the email and still have access to it, you are lucky and Sony will send a password reset to that old email. In my case (and likely several other people), I remembered the email, but it was with an old internet provider that I stopped using 7 years ago, so I no longer have access to it. Once you tell Sony you cannot access the email, they will try and verify you with two questions that will be near impossible to answer: 1) Provide the serial number of the original Playstation system your PSN account was activated on – If you’re like most people that will be a PS3 and you will have traded in that system to a current PS4 meaning you no longer have the serial. Or 2) Verify the current payment method associated – remember from before, the person who took over the account knows this is one of the verifying questions and had already changed the payment method making this question impossible to answer. And Sony will not deviate from these questions regardless of circumstances; you can’t answer, Sony refuses to help your account is lost forever.
Sorry for a long winded rant for the few that will see this, but needed to get the frustration out once and for all. Ultimately, I hope it helps someone else from falling victim to the same takeover resulting from Sony’s sloppy security policies. 10 years of experience/achievements and $800 of games on Playstation down the drain; I’m now a new and happy Xbox client and will never own a PS system – or a Sony product of any kind.
Wow, Sony sounds amazingly stupid in this situation. If this a very suicidal M.O. when it comes to client loyalty.