The Sony breach notification was sent to Sony's clients on April 28th, about 10 days after the date Sony claims the break-in had happened. During those 10 days, the customers already heard all about it through the media. Basically, someone broke into Sony's computers and stole users' info. When Sony found out about it, it shut down its servers and networks, and didn't bother to tell the customers what's going on. Most customers thought that, as in many times before, Sony's servers are just experiencing technical problems.

But within the time-frame between the break-in and Sony's breach notification, the compromised client info could have been used in many different ways, and the clients didn't even know that they need to look for something suspicious, or change passwords. Many people use the same password fo different services. Services that the attacker can now access.

According to Sony's breach notification, the intruder gained a hold of each user's address, country, name, email address, birthdate, handle/PSN online ID, and PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login. Additionally, the user's purchase history and billing address, profile data, and also the user's PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers my have been obtained.

One of the things most people fear about, though, is that their credit card data will be compromised. The Sony breach notification claims that there's no evidence that credit card data (number and expiration date) was obtained, but still implores the users to constantly review their account statements and to monitor their credit or similar types of reports. Now if that's not saying that credit card data was probably stolen, then I don't know what does.

Sony's way of handling this problem was very bad. Not only was the site down without any explanation whatsoever, they waited 10 days to tell the clients that their data was compromised, and even that happened only after the users had already learned about it from the news. And that's Sony. Imagine what can happen with a small company, who doesn't even feel that much obligated to the public.

In short, take care of what you do on the net. The best way is to use a credit card that is strictly for online payments. It will be easier to monitor such a card.