UK PSN, Qriocity And SOE Users – 12 Months Free Identity Fraud Cover

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) have been sending out emails inviting registered customers to change their account passwords as well as detailing the welcome back and identity protection programs. The identity protection program information also applies to PlayStation Network/Qriocity account holders.

So much to my surprise I received my email from SOE yesterday. I don’t even remember creating an account with them. But as it turned out I’d signed up to play Pirates of the Burning Sea when it was in beta many, many years ago. Better sign in and change my password then.

SOE Welcome back program:

• 45 days of game time (30 days plus 1 day for each day of the outage)
• Game time applies to any game you have currently or previously activated on your account
• You must log in to the relevant games by 07:59 am GMT 1st Sep 2011 to claim the game time

Identity protection program:

• Complimentary 12 month identity protection program from Affinion International Limited
• Account holders must be aged 18 years or over and live in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Germany

As a PSN account holder I phoned up Affinion International to get my free 12 months of identity protection. According to the person I was speaking to, they don’t actually have a check box on their screens for the 60 day cover that’s mentioned on their website. They only offer the 12 months of free cover. So I was advised to simply ignore the 60 day cover option. Hmmm, interesting. I wonder if Sony know about this?

How to get your free identity protection:

• Phone: 0800 456 5913 (UK residents)
• Press 1 for PSN/Qriocity account holders, press 2 for SOE account holders
• Then press 1 to enrol for 12 months of free indentity protection cover
• Listen to about 5 minutes of recorded sales talk
• Then you get to talk to a Affinion agent/help person/human being

Once you’ve got through to a real person, which doesn’t take very long, they will ask you for the following bits of information:

• First and last name
• PSN/Qriocity ID
• Date of birth
• Home address (or address that you registered your PlayStation 3 console with)
• Telephone number
• Credit/debit card number (if you want the free card monitoring cover)

Once you’ve provided this information you are asked if you’re happy for it to be sent securely to a company in the US who work with Affinion to provide their services. To finish off you are transferred to a recorded message about the 12 months protection that you’ve just signed up to. After the message has finished the call cuts off automatically. From start to finish the call to Affinion took 15 minutes.

North American PSN, Qriocity and SOE users should go here for information on their identity protection program.

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