Sony’s now week-long PSN debacle took a turn for the worse yesterday. They announced that certain aspects of their secure servers had been breached leaving their customer’s personal information vulnerable. If that sounds serious, it’s because it is. This is a major security issue that Sony is “diligently” working to correct. The good news is that Sony has stated that the servers that house credit card information have not been affected.
While that IS good news, it still doesn’t mean us as consumers and Sony’s customers are out of the woods. The biggest issue here is email address and password security. Sony confirmed that it had been compromised. The immediate danger here is that these “hackers” could use your PSN info to buy content on Playstation Network. Outside of the satisfaction they would get out from just being colossal jerk-wads, this practice wouldn’t benefit the hacker at all. All purchases would be tied to your PSN account and a password reset would fix the problem.
The real problem comes in with the practice of customer’s using the same login and password across multiple sites on the interweb. Think hard, is your PSN login info the same as your amazon.com info, or your ebay info, or god forbid your paypal info? Since its human nature to practice consistency in passwords, most people have a lot of login overlap on the internet. It’s the easy way out. Rather than remembering 14 different passwords, you only have to remember one. Now, think about every retailer you have ever purchased from that has your credit card information…nervous yet?
I don’t mean to scare you, but if you have a PSN account you should at least be paying attention. Just because the system was cracked, doesn’t mean your specific information was leaked. It doesn’t hurt to be safe though. I spent last night updating my passwords across the entire internet. It took less than 30 minutes and now for all intents and purposes my info is secure again. I may even have my bank issue me a new debit card, just to be thorough. Ask anyone that has been through identity theft and you’ll find that it’s not fun. Assuming full-on identity theft could come from this is unlikely, but disputing credit card/debit card transactions isn’t a cake walk either. Its definitely not worth holding on to that “awesome” dragonball password you thought of back in 1998.
Don’t be an ass, just change your pass.
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