So Sony is seriously under fire after the PlayStation Network breach. With 75 million users the prospect that personal data including names, email addresses, postal addresses, birthdays, user names and log in passwords may have been stolen is obviously cause for concern. Worse is the possibility, which they can’t yet rule out, that credit card details may have been stolen too. I use PSN so naturally it’s a concern and it’s worth taking a few precautions. If you use the same password elsewhere (which you really shouldn’t do) then change it and keep an eye on your credit card transactions to make sure nothing untoward appears.
Can’t help feeling the reaction is a bit OTT. Reading some of the press on this you’d think that Sony planned the whole thing but the fact is that the theft of personal details and especially credit card details is rife online, that’s why most decent banks have proper security in place so you can’t make a transaction with the card details alone. The criminals stealing the info are surely the bad guys here not Sony. You can argue they should have better security and encryption in place but they are hardly the first organization to suffer this kind of breach.
Whatever you feel about their culpability what isn’t in doubt is that this is a major PR disaster and a lot of people with a vested interest will pick this up and use it as a stick to beat them with. Apparently there is already a lawsuit in motion. A lot now depends on how they handle the aftermath but it looks set to drag on for quite a while.
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