US PSN Accounts Struck By Unannounced Passwords Reset
As of late the PlayStation brand has had its, in my opinion, fair share of public support. If next –gen sales numbers are correct, gamers worldwide have (re-) embraced PlayStation and I hope this trend continues when in a few day time the PS4 officially lands in Europe.
A large aspect of the new found love gamers show for PlayStation stems from the gaming company’s ability to learn from past mistakes. Hmm, no, let me rephrase that; Sony has done an excellent job at communicating a message which resonated with gamers and arguably the gaming industry as a whole. Time will tell if they can truly deliver on their message.
Most gamers are very familiar with the dark period during which PlayStation Network (PSN) went offline for three weeks; PSN and PSN-user accounts being compromised by hacktivists certainly wasn’t good PR for the company. Even though the Xbox Live service from competitor Microsoft has also been compromised. The vocal majority of the gamers, at least on the internet, still associate these hacks more with PlayStation than with other companies. Digital safety has been, is , and will be an issue for a long time to come seeing how our lives are increasingly intertwined with digital networks, whether you like this or not. But let me try and get to the point I want to make.
Today I turned on my PlayStation Vita and wanted to kick some online *** in Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition. Instead of connecting to PSN I was met with a message telling me my login information was incorrect. I freaked out and immediately started crying, after a couple of retries which all ended in the same message I tried to log in to PSN on the Sony Entertainment Network webstore. Same message, my login information wasn’t correct so I was denied access to my account.
So I did the only thing I could before picking up the telephone and call on the help from PlayStation’s customers service; I ACTED like I forgot my password by choosing the option in the PSN login screens, and after I jumped through the necessary hoops I received an email to reset my password. After that everything was smooth sailing and I could once again connect to PSN.
So basically it is a storm in a glass of water. But @italkgame, then why this lengthy article about the PSN Blackout? Well like I said at the beginning of this post, lately PlayStation has shown they “know what consumers want”, and communication wise they outwitted their opponents. If PlayStation can do this to secure their future position in the console space, then surely they can also send me an email telling me how they have reset my password to secure the safety of my account.
Now I had to find out for myself and although this time PlayStation might very well have done the best thing to protect my account from being compromised, the lack of communication about this irks me and I am instantly reminded about the fiasco back in 2011.
A simple email alongside the reset would have showed me PlayStation has learned from their past mistakes. In all fairness it seems some people have received an email notification, if this is true then why didn’t I?A week ago PS Vita gamers were met with new Terms of Service in a manner which led to Vitas being unable to connect to PSN, while the solution was very simple PlayStation didn’t communicate why this happened very openly. A few days ago minimur12 wrote an article on how EU PSN accounts were also reset as a precautionary measure, and similar to now users learned of this after the reset happened. One would think that PlayStation would have learned from the confusion which followed, and give their customers a heads up.
What are your thoughts on this. Did this reset effect you and what was your reaction? Show your support for this kind of article by sharing through the usual social suspects; aka Google+, Twitter, Facebook ect. You can contact me directly on twitter @italkgame or leave a comment below
Check your spam folder. Same happened to me a week ago, didnt know what was going on, checked my spam folder and Sony had emailed me about it.
I found out my password wasn’t working anymore then I did the whole forgot my password thing to reset it. An entire day later I got the email about them resetting the password on my account.
Seems they’re obviously being hush hush about this actually being a nation wide thing.
I almost thought I was hacked XD
I got an email. :/
Though I would like to have known more details about the “suspicious activity” associated with my account (and everybody else’s, I assume)
Okay big problem. My email account tied with my PSN account has been deactivated(damn Yahoo!). So now what do I do to reset my password?
Go to play station.com and either call them or wait for a live chat with a support agent and ask for a password reset and provide a little proof that its your account.
@kk had the same problem when the European accounts reset last Thursday, you HAVE TO call them, e.mails will be answered after a few days telling you that calling is the only solution. They will want your details, last games bought, and a photo/photocopy of some photo ID. It will take from 1-7 days for them to sort it out. I called Saturday and got my account back today. Hope this helps
I got an email too..
I am able to connect to my account in the media go and download psp content on my pc. But I can no longer use the charles trick with my vita 2.61. Media go never asked for a password reset. What?
using charles my vita says that 2.61 is the lastest firmware, but I try to sign in to psn and it says i need to update the firmware!
You have to change you password online. I dont rememer the web address but im sure ubcan find it onle and save your proxy.
Happened to me when I was playing my PS3 and realized that my account was not signing in. When proceed to signing in, the password was incorrect and then I thought that my account has been hacked. So, I proceeded to reset the password, make a new one and can log in just fine afterward.
All of NA was hit by this because my account is canadian and it is also ***
unfortunately not all.. my account didnt reset its password.. i was able to log in like normally
My US account was fine too. Tho I had a reset on my EU account.
both of the problems you mentioned in your post affected me. the new terms of use agrement made me unable to sign in to certain apps for a whole week! not to mention i was unable to play any games online. yestrday, i had about ten mins to spare before my CS class and wanted to play soul sacifice, but you will never guess what happened then! it took me all day to finally try password reset and everything was fine. I got no email about this (which really would have solved everything). but i get no problem recieving their psn ads once a week. i think sony really needs to step up their customer service game
Bast part about all of this is that I got an email notifying me of the password change about 2 hrs after the password change.
This happened to me as well, and as I’m Canadian I think I can safely say this is happening with the Canadian PSN as well.
Same thing happened to me in EU 1 week ago. I freaked out, thinking my account was compomised! Finally I called support the other day, and after some identification stuff, I was send a reset email.
Thinking about that, a warning email, would save me about fears of someone stealing my account and thinking back at 2011 psn security breach, is was not good!
I am still angry about that anyway, since they didn’t warn me about the reset!
I got an email but it was late in the afternoon. None-the-less I got one and it was before I logged onto my Vita.
I grew up Nintendo, S Nes and Sega Genesis!!! From ps1 on I knew playstation was in it for the graphics, my abandoning the other platforms was met with the worlds greatest system ever known, the Playstation 2!!! But now I see the wretched and disgusting garbage phucken filth that gaming systems are utilized for now. They were never at all intended for what they are doing, and for some reason it’s okay and acceptable. Go Ouya or some other people made platforming, *** nsa and their graphics!!!
I had my account password reset and an email was sent saying this:
The Sony Entertainment Network team regularly monitors for any suspicious activity on our network. When we discover suspicious activity, we sometimes reset passwords to protect consumers and their account information. Your account password was recently reset as part of this process and you will need to create a new password the next time you access your account using the “Forgot Your Password” option on the Sign in screen.
really, I use a good strength password and only use it for PSN, so for someone else get my account flagged for suspicious activity, someone would need to hack into Sony’s server(s) and get my password that way.
either that or Sony is full of ***, and that they just reset a whole bunch of account passwords because a few got compromised by social engineering techniques or phishing.
I live in the US and after reading this article i tried logging into psn……. no password reset. Logged right in. Are they doing it in waves? Or am I just one of the “lucky” ones?
@.@ same .. i was wondering why i wasnt affected.. well i guess its luck buddy
lol i will take all the luck i can get. BTW @italkgame… lovin the gif lol
my acc pass didnt get reset o.0
I got email notifying psn password have been compromised.
I actually got an E-mail from them notifying me about the action taken place…..must’ve hit your spam folder
I was so *** when this happened too, which was for me around 10:45pm EST -5:00. But then I hopped the phone to call Sony only to be on hold until 12:01 midnight… So while near falling asleep around 2:50 am, I figured out the phony Date of Birth that is needed to reset the password. This has taught me to be more careful with phony birth-dates as it can come back to haunt you like it did me.
Can someone tell me the actor’s name in the gif please ???
Steve Buscemi
and the movie’s name? could be a good one, y’know?
Billy Madison…starring Adam Sandler…it was a list of people to kill for teasing him in his childhood and he crossed Billy’s name off for apologizing…then he puts on some lipstick.
I thought my account had got hacked -.-
Can someone tell me the actor’s name on the gif please ?
I can confirm that, if you faked your information and can’t recall it, you have to call them. Don’t even bother emailing, they’ll just tell you the number and ask you to reference a bunch of numbers, which probably refers to the email. Luckily I got a Birthday email, so I just started spamming random years in the forgot password section, lol.
Steve Buscemi fu
hasn’t happened to me, i have no suspicious activities on my account 😛 speaking of which, what does it constitute for it to be tagged as a “suspicious activity”?
i wonder if Japanese PSN will be the next one? Shoot, do I need to start brushing up my spoken Japanese in order to prepare for this?
It already happened to me and I maintain a domestic (US) account and a Japanese account I created using some real fake info like saying my Japanese domestic address was Waseda University, etc.. Basically I’m completely locked out as normal recovery methods are as follows:
-Reset your password by validating your email and birthdate associated with the account (I can’t do this as it says my birthdate is invalid)
-Email support providing your phone number and address info (invalid for me as my info is fake. Even if I used the real address I used to live at I doubt they’d want to deal with me “abroad”).
-Attempt to get support through their live chat client (this hasn’t worked for me and I’ve tried it 17 times).
-If you can’t receive an email response, they may call you directly (again, invalid. Fake/no longer valid phone #).
When I sent a support email I used a bunch of fake data just to get it to go through and explained I am abroad. They sent an automated response saying generally “we’ve received a large number of inquiries similar to yours” – what this didn’t tell me was if I will get an actual response other than “we got it and there’s a lot of other people with the same problem”.
My advice would be to verify right now your email address and birthdate associated with your Japanese PSN account. That way if it does get reset like mine did (most seemed to occur on Nov. 22, Japan datetime) then you can use the normal password recovery. However, I am a bit worried something got corrupted so the birthdate that would have been valid has been rendered incorrect. In which case, I suggest you dig up any transaction emails from PSN (they all include a transaction # and will usually tell you remaining wallet balance) and find the serial # for the device(s) associated with the account. The latter piece of information cannot be spoofed and may serve as a sort of two-factor authentication that “hey, all my stored details are hosed but I can give you the unique serial to the console which someone would have to physically steal from me to use”.
Uhm, that’s weird. I got an email from Sony saying that they had reset my password for security purposes. Did you not get yours?
i didn’t receive email to reset my password its been 2 days now. 🙁
didn’t receive email nor I had to change my password, yet!
100% sure it’s because some ppl share their accounts, or even sell accounts with shared games. And Sony wanted t. Screw them. Some ppl use to do that in Brazil and sell the account with the game on eBay like websites for 2 users (used To be 4)
Yup I am still without access to my account after FOUR days. They have denied me access to my account and what I have paid for. They have ‘locked’ my account. Honestly I wonder sometimes what idiot at Sony decided it would be a good idea to change all their customer’s passwords so they can’t access their own accounts. I will be demanding a refund from Sony for breach of contract.
I was affected by this on my Japanese PSN account. A lot of the forums (both PSN itself and others like the PSO2 community) have had a lot of people complaining about this happening.
The only way I was informed this happened was when I was suddenly unable to access the PSN Store as I normally did. Checking the email account associated with the PSN account there was an email saying my password had been reset forcibly due to their “routine checks” finding traces of unauthorized access or attempts thereof.
When I created the account I am almost 100% certain I correctly put in my birthday, but when going to reset it just kicks me back saying either the email address or birthdate were wrong. I can’t recover my password. I’ve tried their email support – got an automated message back saying they have a high volume of people affected like me. Their live chat also consistently failed me as I am 0 for 17 attempts at IM chatting with a rep (yes, I am fluent in Japanese).
The most irritating thing aside from lack of communication this would happen is the fact they still rely on an email address and birthdate for users to recover their password. Guess what? I could probably steal accounts if I just snooped around facebook enough. I’m still pending follow up with Sony Japan but I have my doubts if they’ll let me back into my account even though I can provide receipts for digital purchases and even the serial # for the console linked to the account. It’s just frustrating.