Personal details on 2,500 Sony users appear on web site; Sony removes them

Personal details of 2,500 Sony users were posted to a web site by hackers. Those people were among the Sony users whose identity was stolen by hackers. But Sony said the details have since been removed from the unnamed web site.

(Update: The users were not from the PlayStation Network, but were from a Sony user database).

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The data included names and some addresses from a database created in 2001, Sony told Reuters.

Sony made that announcement as it said that it would delay the restart of the PlayStation Network, going back on an estimate it made a week ago after it publicly apologized to users. About 77 million registered users had their personal data exposed as a result of a hacker attack that forced Sony to bring down the online gaming service more than two weeks ago. Another 24 million users had their personal data exposed in an attack on the Station PC online gaming service.

No date has been set for the resumption of service.

Sony is mulling a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the hackers, according to AllThingsDigital. Seybold didn’t address this matter in his post. Sony also has to make sure it protects itself from more possible hacker attacks. Sony said yesterday that it is offering a $1 million insurance policy to protect U.S. PSN users from identity theft, since Sony still isn’t sure if hackers stole 10 million Sony customer credit card numbers.

J.P. Morgan published a report noting that “Sony is the victim here” even though the Japanese consumer electronics giant has been widely criticized for its slow disclosure. It noted that Sony has not provided any cost guidance related to the insurance policy.

Sony’s top executives have repeatedly apologized for the outage. Check out our timeline of Sony’s hacker troubles.