That may surprise you. The network itself has been out six days and, though we've been covering it, outrage has been minimal. The PlayStation Network offers multiplayer online gaming similar to Xbox Live. And it turns out there are 77 million PlayStation Network accounts, compared to the 30 million "active" Xbox Live accounts that Microsoft most recently boasted. But the experience isn't the same, and the devotion certainly isn't as fervent. The great majority of PlayStation and PSP owners have PlayStation Network accounts largely because they're free, and because not having them can be an inconvenience.
Well, now having them has become an inconvenience.
Seventy-seven million is a lot of accounts — compare that to Gawker Media's recent breach, where hackers stole data on 1.4 million readers. And while the attack last month on the Epsilon marketing company jeopardized more than 250 million people, the data the company had on those people was slight. Hackers could glean a person's name and email address, and whether or not they shopped at L.L. Bean, or banked at Citigroup.
With the PlayStation Network, Sony is already admitting that far richer information has probably been stolen: Name, address, date of birth, email address, online ID and password. It doesn't take a criminal mind to understand what that means, just connect the dots: known locations of expensive gaming hardware, potential logins to banks or Facebook, personal trivia that could be used for identity verification.
And that's assuming the hackers didn't get users' credit card numbers. You're well aware of what they could do with those, especially when paired with all that other relevant information.
For the record, while Sony tells us there are 77 million PlayStation Network user accounts worldwide, the company has not clarified how many individuals that represents. Some gamers have told us they have multiple accounts on the network. Still, without a doubt, tens of millions of people are sure to have been affected.
Alan Paller, research director of the SANS Institute, told Reuters that the breach may be the largest theft of identity data information on record.
Paller said Sony probably did not pay enough attention to security when it was developing the software that runs its network. In the rush to get out innovative new products, security can sometimes take a back seat.
"They have to innovate rapidly. That's the business model," Paller said to Reuters. "New software has errors in it. So they expose code with errors in it to large numbers of people, which is a catastrophe in the making."
Rest assured, Sony is not alone. Other companies will certainly experience similar breaches in the coming months. We may be entering the age of the data breach. Hopefully soon after that, we will enter the age of real data security, but for that to happen, companies need to shape up.
Companies are machines built to make money, not to protect your information. In many countries, the government has assumed that responsibility, but in America's free market, it's hard to hope for definitive privacy legislation. The most recent online privacy bill, proposed last month, angered opponents for being too harsh, and angered advocates for being too weak.
Unfortunately, the outrage has to come from us — and our wallets. Strong security needs to be a sales pitch that we buy into and hold companies accountable for. That will be effective, but only if we pay attention.
Information from Reuters was used in this report. And, msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.
(Source: ingame.msnbc.msn.com)