Today Sony disclosed that the personal information of Playstation Network users might have been compromised in an ”illegal and unauthorized intrusion” sometime between April 17 and 19. Although this is certainly a serious situation, experts agree that those whose financial information is used without their knowledge and consent will not have to pay to have the situation rectified. ”In the US, none of Sony’s customers will have to pay for any fraudulent use of credit information,” says Wedbush Morgan analyst (and former attorney) Michael Pachter in an interview with Eurogamer. ”Sony will work with the financial institutions to cover any losses.” Also, Pachter says that Playstation Plus subscribers will have to be reimbursed in some way for the loss of services during the outage.

Meanwhile, Sony is urging account holders to be prepared for attempts to use their stolen information against them in the form of Internet scams. ”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,” the company says in a FAQ document on their official site. They also suggest that users should keep a close eye on their account statements and credit reports.