Sony to restore Qriocity Thursday, except in Japan

Sony said it would restore all Qriocity online music and video distribution services Thursday everywhere except Japan, after shutting it and its PlayStation Network down in April due to hacker attacks. The company said in a statement that it would announce the restoration of Qriocity services in Japan when they become available. Sony has already restored all PlayStation Network services everywhere except Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, enabling users in the Americas and Europe and much of Asia to buy and download games online. Sony was attacked in one of the biggest data breaches since the advent of the Internet, in which personal data from 100 million accounts was compromised. The company later suffered attacks on websites including in Greece, Thailand and Indonesia, and on the Canadian site of mobile phone company Sony Ericsson. In a new headache, Sony Marketing, the Tokyo-based company that markets and sells Sony products in Japan, announced Thursday an unidentified person may have stolen "Sony points" from customers' accounts by using their e-mail addresses. That person may have exchanged the points worth some 280,000 yen ($3,500 ) for shopping coupons that could be used to buy Sony products, according to the company. A total of 95 e-mail addresses were involved in the case but the company said there was "no trace of leakage from our company of personal information including e-mail addresses and passwords," Sony Marketing said. A Sony spokesman said there was no evidence that the marketing firm's security had been breached but how the points were stolen was yet to be investigated.