Yes it does make much more sense.

All other details, name, address and so on you can get from many public records. I'm not sure how that makes you any less vulnerable than usual TBH.

It’s all available in one handy lump. NO need for research. Someone is sitting non something that can be split up and sold on.

There is also other information taken that can help the fraudster seem more real - answers to mother’s maiden name like questions.

Put it this way - as an example, I have an Egg credit card. The pieces of security information required to get access to that account online are below,

First name
Second name
Date of Birth
Postcode
Mother's maiden name
password

Undoubtedly, when designed, that was seen as fairly secure. Now, here are the pieces of security information required that Sony hasn't just given away to effectively the entire internet :-

password

Now do you see the problem? I have identity theft insurance on my current account. I'd never bothered to activate it before and I couldn't get into the service web site to do so, so I rang their customer care line. The representative, who was very professional, went through a security check procedure before resetting the password for me. The answers to ALL of the questions he asked, Sony have just given away to effectively the entire internet.

No, they may not have your credit card details. But with what has been given away, they stand a bloody good chance of being able to get them if they want to. That's the problem.

I don't remember ever putting in my mother's maiden name anywhere . Did you do that when linking a credit card? As for passwords, surely people don't use the same one for anything else?

I'm just full of questions as I had no cc linked so I'm not sure what extra information you would have had to give in.

That said have they actually confirmed these details were stolen or that the possibility existed?

I am aware that with my amnesia if I used the same password for everything I could be in trouble. So I invested in a password manager and use it. I change passwords when necessary and upgrade them to as strong as possible. Even so the numbers of websites that will only allow short passwords is incredible. The shortest I have come across is 4 digits. A few allow 30 digit passwords but many are capped at 12-16 characters long. My wifi WPA2 password is 50 digits long and so pretty secure. Though I struggle to find websites that allow passwords as secure as that.

More importantly when the [LIFTED] is PSN going to be back up and running... I have F1 races to lose........

This is actually a big problem. Every online service you use should, really, have a different password. The thing is that there are hundreds of places where such passwords can be used. I’m a bit lax in some places, but for banks and PayPal, I’ve got big, different passwords. In fact, someone tried to get a password reminder for my Gmail account the other day, so I changed that for something bigger and more secure.

I, too, have a piece of software here to help me manage stuff like this. I really, really can’t remember every 12 or 16 character combination of numbers and letters I use, and I don’t have amnesia. Your problem is more of a help than a hindrance for you in this instance.

Read this

Phrases (including spaces) are actually as secure, if not more so, than even quite long 'single word' strings and are more easily memorised.

Jon

I have more than 200 logins. The amnesia has meant that I had to address this problem. So in that respect it has helped. I do suggest to people to actually get a password manager. For mac users I recommend 1Password. It is actually pretty handy but even on the iPad I can use cut and paste of a password if need be.

I’m using Yojimbo for my passwords. It needs a password to get into, and there is also an iPad/iPhone app available.

What ever password manader you use it means that if one account is compromised the rest of your accounts are still safe. It also makes it easy to change regularly if necessary.

A talking head on the BBC News channel said that you must obviously be cautious, but his thoughts were that if you have not started to see odd things on your card statements, then it’s possible that you may not be affected. Obviously, he can’t be 100% sure (no one can at the moment). I think that’s a bit optimistic, TBH, PSN user data is in the wild. It could be a few people, it could be the whole 77million. It may take a while for them to get round to you (or indeed me).

Arseing buggery cock. </stephenfry>

What's really frustrating is that I can't recall if I've used one card or the other. Have to get home and find out which one it is. If it's the credit card, not too bothered. If it's the debit card

If you report the card as compromised now they'll block it, but they probably won't send a new one out until Tuesday, so it probably won't get to you until Thursday at the earliest. You could wait until Tuesday to ask for it to be blocked and you'd still probably get the new one at roughly the same time. So I suppose it's up to you to balance the risk of it being used nefariously before Tuesday against the convenience of being able to have it available over the long weekend.

The utterly farcical part of this is the hackers have access to the details of the credit cards used on PSN, but the actual users don't.

Jon