It makes you think

The Internet is such a wonderful tool, it is hard to imagine life without it these days. However, using the Internet does leave us wide open to abuse by the “bad guys”. As fast as companies shore up the security of information that they hold on us, criminals find ways to breach those defences in order to obtain lucrative details about our lives.

We all know that we should use a different secure password for each account we have on the Internet but we don’t. To make matter worse, we readily supply vital details to anyone who requests it on the Internet without a second thought.

Now we read that Sony are contacting around 70 million of their customers to warn them that details including their names, addresses, dates of birth, passwords and security questions have been stolen. The electronics giant also admitted that the hackers may have gained access to people’s credit card details.

Experts described the security breach as a “nightmare” scenario, which could leave millions of PlayStation users open to identity and credit card fraud. Phew, I don’t have a PlayStation so I am not one of them. It does make me think of how many different sites I have sent details to including my credit cards.

It isn't just Sony that has suffered from this kind of problem, earlier this month, US firm Epsilon, which manages data for companies including Barclaycard, Citigroup and hotel chain Marriott, confirmed that millions of email addresses had been stolen in an attack on its servers. However, the data stolen in this case was limited only to email addresses.

In March, online retailer Play.com warned that customer emails and some personal information had been stolen, though the company stressed that credit card details were safe. In January, cosmetics firm Lush admitted that credit card details belonging to some of its customers had been stolen in the run-up to Christmas. The company advised customers to contact their bank.