Image by Jami3.org via Flickr
Sony has apologized and offered a $1 million insurance policy to American users affected by its recent security breach. Bloomberg reports that the $1 million identity-theft insurance policy will cover legal expenses, identity-restoration costs and lost wages that occur after data is stolen. More than 100 million user accounts have been affected by the breach. Sony shares dropped 4.5% to their lowest level in seven weeks in Tokyo today after the company upped the total number of affected accounts to 101.6 million.
“This is an unprecedented case of information theft in terms of the number of accounts involved,” analyst Nobuo Kurahashi was quoted as saying. “There are lots of uncertainties including lawsuits, making it difficult to estimate the company’s overall expense.”
-------
Password manager Last Pass has asked its users to change their master passwords after discovering a potential breach to its database. Last Pass is an award-winning password management system which integrates with a user's browser, allowing them to remember one password in place of several. It also offers a web-form filling service. Despite no concrete evidence of a breach or attack, the company says it is investigating unusual traffic patterns. While it is possible a small amount of encrypted data--not the master passwords themselves--was stolen, the odds of the data being useful to a hacker are “vanishingly small,” according to PC Mag. Last Pass is meanwhile working on stronger encryptions and has moved all services from the affected systems before shutting them down.
-------
Electronic Arts has posted a narrower annual loss from last year and said it was betting on the success of Battlefield 3 to boost its bottom line. The games developer recorded a loss of $276 million for the year ended March 31, an improvement on the previous year’s deficit of $677 million. The company had a strong fourth-quarter, with profits of $151 million compared to $30 million the year before, Game Pro reports.
The year’s biggest release for the company will be Battlefield 3, the follow-up to last years Battlefield: Bad Company. EA says the pre-orders for the newest iteration of the series are up 700% on last year. Speaking about the as-yet unannounced new Call of Duty title, EA President Frank Gibeau said, “We know we have a big competitor, but head-to-head with Call of Duty in Q3 we have a superior game engine, a superior development studio and a flat out superior game.”
-------
Facebook has launched a new service that pays users to watch ads. The new Groupon-style incentive plan offers users the chance to earn Facebook Credits that can be used to purchase real-life goods on Facebook Deals. The service offers around 1 credit (or 10 cents) per ad viewed. The ads will mostly be in games, with CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate and Zynga participating. Facebook is working with TrialPay to provide analytics. The move represents “a step away from interruptive advertising,” Mashable quotes Dan Greenberg, CEO of participating ad company Sharethrough, as saying.
-------
Meanwhile, Facebook and Google are separately considering deals to buy Skype, according to Reuters, which cites two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions. The report adds that Facebook and Google are looking at the possibility of joint ventures or buying Skype in a deal that could value the telephony service at $3-4 billion.
