2 wrongs does not make it right.

The other guy does it is not a justification. It's an extremely weak excuse at best and would never hold up in a court of law.

I'm not sure how that applies to my statement...My point is that people are overreacting. In my experience, CC companies refund you when your card is used fradulently. As for the ID theft thing, I don't remember Sony asking for SSNs. Pretty sure all the other info they requested is freely available online. Google your own name/home phone #, you may be surprised what shows up.

Sony confirmed some parts of PSN Japan is online.

http://www.playstationjunkie.co.uk/ps3/japan-online-confirmed/551/

Fake or real?

I've avoided most discussion about this on this site.  Why?

Because too many of you guys are too emotionally involved to be rational about this.  EVERYTHING to you is about console wars, be it RRoD or this.  People feel it's their mission to run to the defense or attack instead of stepping back and looking at this the way more balanced individuals are.

It's bad.  It's horrible.  It won't be the end of Sony by any means, though.  It WILL be a horrible black mark on the company, and that is them reaping what they have sown.  

But what I will never understand is how those of you that are such zealous defenders of Sony will minimize the potential impact on customers lives.  This isn't a game or some petty console war on a forum.  This is the real world.  You want to help Sony?  Then take this as serious as the rest of the world is and encourage your fellow Sony customers to take whatever precautions necessary to protect themselves.  

after reading the article I'm gonna take this with a grain of salt...

Yesterday, it was revealed that Sony Online Entertainment got itself hacked for a laugh. The result was the theft of 12,700 credit card numbers. Yet more bad PR and panic circulated the Internet, but there's a bit of "good" news for those potentially affected -- only 900 of these cards were active. 

Turns out that the nefarious hackers ransacked an outdated database that went back as far as 2007, so most of the cards were invalid at the time of the breach. Nevertheless, if you've ever signed up for SOE's wares, you might want to check your statements a little more thoroughly. 

It's a minor positive in a whirlwind of bad news for Sony. At this rate, things couldn't get worse if Jack Tretton kicked a puppy right on its arsehole. In fact, this might be his only chance to get away with it unnoticed. Do it, Jack! 

http://www.destructoid.com/sony-only-900-of-our-stolen-credit-cards-were-active-200301.phtml

Yeah, I'm sure facebook pages have home addresses, e-mails, passwords, bank account numbers, cc, and other info for the public to see. Also, you're forgetting that not everyone who are at risk have a Facebook account.

Anyways, corporations have a duty to keep customer's information secured, and they must notify their customers in a timely matter whenver a breach occurs. Sony, on the other hand, took about a week to notify their customers, and they barely found that SOE was affected as well (almost two weeks since it happened).

Mostly addresses, phone numbers, and emails.

Yea, and according some people, that's all you need for people to steal your identity.  Don't buy that at all.  Besides, the only people who still care about this are die hard gamers who frequent sites like this often.  This whole mess has mostly been sponged away by the average gamer and public because of Bin Laden's death.  The only way that this could even come back as main news and really hurt Sony is if millions have their identities stolen.  But I don't see that happening at all.