UPDATE: Credit card data "may have" been taken, they say.  Not a guarantee.  Still, I ordered a new card.  Why take a chance?

OK, kids, here's where it gets complicated.  The week-long (and counting) outage of the Sony PlayStation Network has taken a really sour turn today as the company has admitted that the hacker(s) who broke into the network have absconded with the name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password, login, password security answers, handle/PSN online ID, purchase history, credit card number, and expiration date of every PSN account.  All seventy-five million of them.  Good lord; where to even begin with all of that?  Sony has provided a long document that you really should read if you have a PSN account.  Here's a piece:

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, postal mail or other scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking.  Additionally, if you use the same user name or password for your PlayStation Network or Qriocity service account for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them.  When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are back on line, we also strongly recommend that you log on to change your password.  To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports.

This is such a major... well, I suppose clusterfuck is the only word for it, and long-time PTB readers know that I don't drop words like that very often.  We're trying to enjoy a civilized society here, but there will always be those who want to break that down for whatever reasons, and we don't have the complete picture on just who is to blame here: organized crime ring / identity thieves, greedy pirates, indignant hackers who want to attempt to "teach Sony a lesson"... the company certain has made its share of enemies this generation and painted a tempting target on its back.  In the end, it's the PSN users who are caught in the crossfire and used as pawns, victims, or something in between. All PSN users want is to enjoy the PlayStation services in peace.  Those who would illegally interfere with that can go straight to hell.  Strong words?  You bet.  This is what you get when my personal and financial information is stolen.