Putting PSN/Sony-gate into perspective

Great article where you realize there are companies you probably haven't even heard of that have done worse.
http://wikibon.org/blog/the-11-largest-data-breaches-in-recent-history/

 The minute they officially brought down the entire PSN network, I assumed something bad was up. Yeah, it was bullshit that they waited days to inform people to that fact, but I think we all had a pretty good idea that whatever was going on wasn't going to be good.

Also, I think this was more of a "See Sony, we can do this" kind of hack and data theft than someone actually wanting to use that data for malicious purposes. Sony has pissed off a lot of people over the past few months, for better or worse, and this seems more like someone wanting to make a point than actually screw with individuals' personal information.  Not to say you shouldn't be vigilant about bank and credit card accounts created in your name that may or may not have been created by you personally. I had a roomate in college create an account with Sprint under my name and run up $3100 in phone/internet charges over a 3 week period while I was out of town, but luckily in the end I was able to have the charges dismissed because he gave them a SS# that wasn't even remotely close to my real one.

I did cancel the card I had on PSN and have a new one issued, but I think this is the 3rd time in as many years that I've had to do it, personal information and credit card information theft aren't a new concept, some of the more prominent retail sites on the internet have had similar things happen, albeit on a smaller scale.

Sucks, but it always sucks, and a month or two from now, it'll be all but forgotten. You can't expect to use online services these days and not take the risk of things like this happening, we have reached a level of transparency in personal information that we've never had to deal with. I think if anything this has been a wake up call to Sony, and hopefully the endgame will be that their security will be much better for it.

And I'm still playing Uncharted 3 when it comes out later this year yo. Hopefully online.