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PlayStation Network is adding two-factor sign-ins

It'll be that much harder to hijack your PSN account.

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

It's about to get much harder for someone to compromise your PlayStation Network account. Sony has confirmed that it's working on two-factor authentication for PSN, preventing intruders from getting into your games (or worse, going on a spending spree) simply because they have your password. It's unclear just what that second identifying factor will be, but the odds are that you'll get an SMS-based code to type in the first time you sign into a device or website.

As Polygon notes, the timing of the news is uncanny -- it comes exactly five years after PSN succumbed to a data breach that exposed 77 million gamers and left the network itself out of commission for weeks. While two-factor authentication wouldn't have addressed the outage, it would have reassured players worried that their data was ripe for the taking. About the only question is why Sony waited so long. Xbox Live added two-factor sign-ins in 2013, so there was certainly precedent for tighter security in the gaming space.