London: A British watchdog has fined Sony 250,000 pounds for a breach that compromised the personal information of 77 million PlayStation users.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined the tech firm after it found the attack on the Sony PlayStation Network in April 2011 could have been prevented.
Personal information including customers’ payment card details, names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth and account passwords were exposed, the Daily Mail reports.
As a result, millions of people had to issue new bank cards, and around three million British users were believed to have been affected.
David Smith, ICO deputy commissioner and director of data protection, pointed out that the attack could have been prevented if software had been up to date, while passwords were also not secure.
According to the paper, Smith called the case ''one of the most serious ever reported'' to the data regulator.
ANI
First Published: Saturday, January 26, 2013, 10:16