Sony’s (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation Network has once again come under fire for its lax security infrastructure that’s led to compromised credit-cards and fraudulent charges.

But what’s even worse is how everyday gamers get punished by the company’s strange policies when trying to clear up the disputes, and how badly they’re treated for doing nothing wrong.

One Reddit user who goes by the handle of kadjar has shared his disappointing story with the /r/Gaming community, detailing Sony’s horribly exploitative methodologies used to resolve fraudulent charges made by PSN hackers.

And the worst part about it is that this could happen to any PSN gamer, at any time. Unless, of course, you never ever file your credit card info with your PSN account.

“My PSN account got hacked this morning,” kadjar began. “Sony support has given me only two options: eat $450 in fraudulent charges and be unable to use my account for 6 months, or dispute the charges with my bank and have my account banned forever.”

And it all started with a few e-mails.

After getting a bunch of e-mail receipts for content he didn’t purchase, kadjar instantly logged into his PSN account and removed his credit card from the PSN account.

“As the transactions came in, one-by-one, it became immediately cl0ear that my account had been hacked,” he said in the Reddit post.

After changing his e-mail  and password and unlinking his credit card, he called Sony support. But it was already too late. The damage had been done, and kadjar’s credit card had been charged over $600 in fraudulent charges.

Many users’ personal credit card information was compromised during the infamous 2011 PlayStation Network hack.

The next step was to get things straightened out with Sony support.

Surely the Japanese console maker had polices in place that protected their users against this sort of thing, right? Especially after the huge 2011 PSN outage where countless users’ personal information was hacked into and stolen.

Surely Sony would have learned from its mistakes to put its consumers–and subscribers–first. Right?

After speaking with a Sony support representative, kadjar was met with a troubling revelation: as per company policy, Sony is only able to refund transactions up to $150, which would go to your PSN wallet, not your bank account.

Plus $150 was just a fraction of the whopping $600 total of charges.

The kicker is that if kadjar went down this route, he’d be banned from his account for half a year.

“The Sony representative told me that they are only permitted to refund transactions of up to $150,” kadjar affirmed in the post.

But that’s not even the worst part.

Sony’s PSN policies are so backwards that if someone gets their account hacked and chooses to dispute the charges with their bank, that their PlayStation Network account would be permanently banned from the network.

Plus you’d also lose any purchases attached to your account–all the games, content, movies, etc would be forfeit.

“He also informed me that I could dispute the charges with my bank, but by doing so, my account would be banned from PSN. As a result, I would permanently lose all of my purchases, including the Last of Us Remastered.”

Let that sink in for a minute. A hacker breaks into your account, buys a bunch of things on your credit card, and Sony doesn’t help you out. No. They want you to pay for someone else’s purchases.

“Furthermore, my account will not be able to activate a new system for 6 months, per Sony policy. I’m completely locked out of my own account until that date.

“I then asked about what would happen if I got my bank to reverse the charges, and he informed me that it would result in a banned account.

“I asked if there would be any way to restore my purchases, and he told me that there would not be, but I “only have the Last of Us and a couple of the monthly free deal games,” so it’s not a big deal.”

And they even go so far as to literally discourage you by saying if you don’t pay for the charges, that you’ll lose your PSN account and all your games. How is this fair? How is this even a thing?

How could it get any worse? But for kadjar, it does: the hacker didn’t just rack up purchases, but he actually stole the account entirely, registering a foreign PS4 to it and thereby basically making it his own.

“The Sony rep also informed me that my existing PS4 had been deactivated from the network this morning, and that a new one had been activated.

“When I asked him to deactivate that new, mystery PS4, he said he could not. I then turned on my PS4, logged in with my new credentials, and attempted to activate my PS4 with my account, but it informed me that I could not activate it as long as there was another PS4 bound to my account.”

Kadjar even went so far as to post his complete log of transcripts with Sony support to prove that this is indeed how the Japanese console-maker handles fraudulent charges.

Other users have corroborated kadjar’s story with nightmare scenarios of their own. “Sony is holding my PSN account hostage” claims one user, and rightfully so. Another gamer has posted up a screenshot of their transcript with Sony chat support, detailing another horrible exploitative scenario.

Sony Can’t Catch the Hackers, So You Have to Pay

This is completely and totally unacceptable, Sony.

You are punishing the very people who made you what you are, you are creative an environment that panders to hackers and criminals and leaving honest, everyday gamers to pick up a tab for fees incurred by debased cyber-criminals.

Punishing gamers for legitimately wanting to dispute charges they didn’t make is absolutely disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Banning someone’s account and taking away every game they’ve ever played or owned unless they pay up is not unlike holding hostages for ransom.

This isn’t the way to repay your customers. This is the way to make people swear off PlayStation altogether and share their experiences with as many people as they can. Anything to show gamers how Sony treats its constituency when they need help the most.

A recent panel showcased the methods used to cripple and crack online networks like Sony’s PSN.

The PlayStation Network is tumultuous and turbulent at best, with hackers constantly pressing in throngs against the cyber gates of Sony’s digital service.

These reports only add in even more healthy skepticism to what is already a very testy online framework, making the targeted mayhem much more worrisome than the widespread crashes that interrupt our gameplay.

Maybe some day we won’t have to worry about being struck by hackers and then successively attacked by Sony’s reflex policies that hold our accounts hostage if we’re ever hacked, but for now, we’re stuck.

There are a few things you can do to help better safeguard your account, but the best thing to do is change your passwords and unlink your credit card info right away.

What You Can Do to Protect Your Account

The safest thing you can do to avoid this nasty situation is to simply never attach your credit card info to your PSN account. Given the convenience of digital sales, that’s easier said than done.

But you can make it harder for hackers to break into your account.

• Unlink your Credit Card - This should be done as soon as possible. You can pick up PS Plus vouchers in any store or even buy codes online. You can also buy digital PSN currency for digital games and content online and at various retailers. If you must use your credit card to add funds make sure you remove it after the purchase is complete.

• Update your passwords frequently – Make sure you always update your passwords–maybe once a month or so–and include multiple characters to generate secure passwords. LastPass has a great secure password generator that randomizes letters, words and symbols to make your digital keys difficult to guess.

• Update security info on PSN acount – Check your Wallet section on your PSN account for a settings page. Here you can add an option to require password entries every time you checkout–which really isn’t very useful considering the hacker already has access to your password if he’s hacked into your account. But at the very least you can turn off recurring subscription payments if you decide to keep your credit card active.

• Pay close attention to e-mails - Every time you purchase something on PSN, whether it’s redeeming a free PS Plus game or buying a new digital title, you get an e-mail receipt confirmation sent to your inbox. You should know right away if something is wrong, but as we’ve seen, by then it’s almost too late.

All in all Sony has messed up here. After being hacked and having their finances abused, users are already rattled, but Sony makes no attempt to make up for the rude invasion of privacy or even help the situation. But that doesn’t matter, not to a company: what matters is that they get their money.

Someone has to pay for it, Sony must think, and it might as well be the people who have been paying from day one: the consumer.

The post PSN Hacker Racks Up $600 in Fraudulent Charges, Sony Refuses To Help appeared first on VR World.

Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) have a very big problem with digital downloading on their next-gen consoles.

Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One suffer from some of the most ill-designed handling of digital content in any generation of gaming, making what was once a convenient feature into a troublesome waiting game.

Instead of being straightforward and streamlined, downloading a full game on next-gen systems is awkward, clunky and utilizes some very nasty underhanded tactics. Often gamers are surprised mid-game by having their session interrupted because their download hasn’t finished, or spend hours upon hours staring at a barely moving progress bar on a home screen.

First let’s take a look at how the PlayStation 4 handles digital downloads.

Play as you download: Crutch or convenience?

Usually PS4 games will be bigger than Xbox One games — Dragon Age: Inquisition clocks in at 44.28 GB on PS4 and 41GB on Xbox One — and as we all know, a bigger game means more waiting. The sheer size of next-gen games like Wolfenstein: The New Order‘s 51GB’s is the main reason to stay away from digital, as you’ll be spending a lot of time waiting for the downloads to complete.

There’s nothing more frustrating than spending the same amount of money and then having to wait half a day to play your game.

It’s also important to remember that having an ultra-fast internet connection doesn’t always translate to super-fast downloads.

Digital games are hosted on Sony’s PlayStation Network servers, which control the maximum bandwidth — that is the transfer rates of the downloads themselves — capping your download speeds by default. So in essence your speed does come into play, but it can’t top the designated cap set by Sony’s servers.

In my experience the PlayStation Network is quite bad. The downloads have taken needlessly long -- Wolfenstein, for example, took most of a day and a night to complete — and it’s something that will vary from person-to-person, but all-in-all Sony doesn’t have a very optimized network environment.

The main problem with the PS4’s digital downloads isn’t the speeds, however: it’s the play-as-you-download feature.

Play-as-you-download was meant to be a huge innovation for digital gamers. But as we’ve seen in the past, Sony’s big ideas are often handled badly in terms of actual execution, and this is certain the case here. The big frustration is that the PS4 only shows you the minimum required download to play as soon as possible–in other words, it shows you how little you need to download in order to jump right in the game.

But it doesn’t tell you the actual full download size.

Instead of being upfront and just informing gamers that there’s about 40GB left to go, it lets you jump right in and start playing. Little do you know that you only have about 10% or so of the game on your console; it tricks you into thinking the full game is ready to go.

Shortly enough you’ll be met with an error prompt that interrupts your game by informing you that the game isn’t done downloading. Huh. So you check the Notifications–> Downloads section, but there’s nothing there.

This is where things get really underhanded. You actually have to navigate to the main PS4 menu and check Settings –> Application Saved Data Management –> and then check the game in the listing. Only then will you see what you’ve actually downloaded.

So not only does the PS4 make you believe you’ve got the full game by letting you play, but it doesn’t even tell you how much you’ve downloaded. You have to prod through menus and search in tedious trial-and-error methods just to get the information you want.

Why can’t the PS4 just tell you both the play-as-you-download install as well as the full game install? Why do gamers have to jump through hoops? Oddly enough the new system update patches haven’t addressed this at all, and it still is a sort of “hidden” feature that irks gamers.

The physical install speeds are incredibly fast. You only need to stick the disc in and you’ll be playing in no less than 3 minutes or so — sometimes it takes as little as one minute — with the full game zipped right onto your hard-drive. No hassle, no mess, just gaming.

The post The Problem With Digital Downloads on the Xbox One And PS4 appeared first on VR World.

Update 2: The PlayStation Network is now online, but Xbox LIVE support is still reporting that “gaming and social” features are limited.

Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners are still unable to play games online and communicate over party chat, and the support team says that it’s “working alongside our partner to get these issues fixed ASAP”.

Update: As promised by both hacking groups, Xbox LIVE has been compromised.

This affects both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms, cutting off services like social chatting and online gaming. Gamers can still buy and play owned content, view the website, and watch media across a host of different apps, but online play will not be available.

Original story as follows:

The PlayStation Network in North America has reportedly been targeted by a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack that has rendered the service offline, preventing users from access the PlayStation Store and other features.

President of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley confirmed the attack in a Tweet:

We are under attack by a large scale ddos. Being dealt with but it will impact games until its handled.

— John Smedley (@j_smedley) August 24, 2014

In a recent update Sony Computer Entertainment of America confirms that both the PlayStation and Sony Entertainment networks have been struck by attempts to “overwhelm the networks with artificially high traffic”.

Sony planned to take the network down for “routine maintenance” tomorrow, and the outage led many to believe that the maintenance had just been launched a day early.

Sony insists that no personal information has been jeopardized by the DDoS attacks–credit card info, personal data, e-mails and login passwords should be safe.

Network update: our engineers are aware of the issues and are working to resolve them. We’ll keep you posted – sorry for the inconvenience

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) August 24, 2014

ShackNews reports that the hacker group Lizard Squad has taken responsibility for the PSN outage on their Twitter account.

The squad made waves by recently hacking Blizzard’s networks that power popular online games like World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, and Hearthstone. The hackers soon escalated their attacks to other popular games including the free-to-play MMO Path of Exile and the ultra-popular MOBA League of Legends.

Lizard Squad, a hacker collective, has taken responsibility for the DDoS attacks and even went so far as to call in a bomb threat on a Sony exec’s flight.

In another line of strike, Lizard Squad made a fake bomb threat on the flight that housed Sony Online exec John Smedley. The SOE President had confirmed the PSN DDoS just hours before this incident.

The threat was sent via Twitter, and resulted in the flight being diverted. The offense sent an eerie message that was felt by gamers and the corporation itself, and Smedley confirmed that “at this time the FBI is handling this directly“.

Yes. My plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys.

— John Smedley (@j_smedley) August 24, 2014

FamedGod, another hacker that may have ties with Anonymous, appears to be behind the attacks. The hacktivist admonishes Lizard Squad for taking the credit for the DDoS attacks, and even went so far as to publicly reveal the squad’s IP addresses on Twitter.

You guys are offline but im online on sonys administrator servers.

— Fame (@FamedGod) August 24, 2014

Proof im online. Im on their administrative server. pic.twitter.com/t9Q4TMBafX

— Fame (@FamedGod) August 24, 2014

Hopefully you learn your lesson SONY. Retweet. @FamedGod & @FearTuX. pic.twitter.com/5fJ7QfnkF8

— Fame (@FamedGod) August 24, 2014

Both FamedGod and Lizard Squad appear to be going after Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE servers next, and it is difficult to tell who is responsible for these attacks–or who is really planning them.

Xbox is Next. #ProjectMicro

— Fame (@FamedGod) August 24, 2014

Is anyone having issues with the Xbox Live Login servers?

— Lizard Squad (@LizardSquad) August 24, 2014

This recent breach in security hearkens back to 2011’s PlayStation Network cyberattack that saw some 77 million users unable to connect to the service for 24 days.

The past network invasion has been counted as one of the largest data breaches in history, with “personally identifiable information” compromised from nearly all those affected.

As of the time of writing I am able to access the PlayStation Store on PS4, mobile and the web. PlayStation Network features such as voice chatting and multiplayer appear to be working, but service access may continue to be spotty and/or unreliable.

Although access may be returned soon, it’s a good idea to change your passwords and unlink your credit cards from both services until further notice. Gamers can avoid linking their credit card info by buying PSN vouchers that give you digital cash on your account, and the same can be picked up for Xbox LIVE.

The post PSN and Xbox LIVE Hacked, Alleged Culprits Step Forward (Updated) appeared first on VR World.