Sony Breach Update: The Scope Expands, While Consumers Wait For Answers About How And Why It Happened

The scope of the Sony data breach is growing, but the public focus continues to be on Sony's actions following the breach, rather than on steps to prevent or mitigate events like these in the first place. As we noted earlier, this focus emphasizes a de facto burden-shifting, in which consumers bear the risk of using on-line or other services, and also are left to face the consequences of any resulting identity theft.

Sony last week announced that 77 million PlayStation and Qriocity accounts had been accessed by hackers in mid-April. This week, Sony discovered that an additional 24.7 million Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) accounts were compromised during the same timeframe. In the SOE breach, Sony confirmed that the compromised information included the bank account, credit card and debit card numbers of thousands of non-U.S. account holders.