What Does Sony Owe Consumers After PSN Nightmare?

What responsibility does Sony have to the 77 1000000 Playstation Net customers who found out this workweek – years after the fact – that their personal information, online account info and deferred payment wag information were purloined away identity thieves?

"When I see something like this, I want to scream," says Florida identity theft good Denise Ralph Richardson. "IT's same a goldmine of information."

Companies in Sony's set back typically respond past offering affected users a class of free credit monitoring–something any consumer in the U.S. is titled to already. "To Maine, that's nothing," Richardson says. "Thieves are seated back laughing at that."

Polished data thieves have moved beyond stolen credit cards and use personal info like birthdates and home addresses to open bank accounts, obtain medical services or collect other people's unemployment checks. The fact that many of Sony's 77 one thousand thousand compromised accounts likely include teenagers and young adults makes information technology worsened, she says, because they may non know their data was compromised for years, compounding Sony's potential liability.

"What happens next depends on how much damage comes from it," Richardson predicts. "It's active to cost Sony billions, is my guess."

Sadly, IT falls to individuals to cancel credit cards, alteration passwords and determine their netmail and other communications carefully, and maybe think twice about typing in reams of attribute info happening all site that asks for it. If you'rhenium looking for help try our PSN Hack Survival guide.

Sony says the information thieves may have collected course credit card Numbers and expiration dates along with users' name calling, energetic and email addresses, PSN online hold and password, birthdate and leverage history, and password hints.

So yeah, they know your mom's maiden mention, best-loved musician and what elementary schoolhouse you attended. And they know your password, so if you're the kind of person who uses the same passwords over and over again, you mightiness be sure a series of unpleasant surprises over the coming months.

But no worries, the consumer electronics giant same today–the three-digit security code launch on the back of your credit card was Non enclosed in the break!

"That," same computer law proficient Mike Godwin, "is like the weakest defense ever."

Adding a sec 3-dactyl code to a 16-figure credit card list is "relying on security practices that are a mate of decades old," said Godwin, who was the first staff advise at the Natural philosophy Frontier Foundation. Forward that is plenty to wave off info thieves is symptomatic of a larger issue: "The uncastrated system of rules is busted."

Sony will have to admit that information technology violated its customers' trustfulness and "start from the ground up," Godwin said. "They have to revamp their entire privacy system and not just wallpaper over their mistake."

In the wake of the breach, Sony is facing multiple legal and regulatory challenges. Godwin adds, "A hugely universal government action would really avail," although Sony's world-wide client base complicates the possibility that restrictive action could do any redeeming.