Sony Hacked Again -- This Time it's SonyPictures.com

Sony has been hacked again. This time, it's not the PlayStation Network but SonyPictures.com that has managed to let hackers make off with more than 1 million users' personal data.

"We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1,000,000 users' personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts," a group of hackers who call themselves LulzSec said. "Among other things, we also compromised all admin details of Sony Pictures (including passwords) along with 75,000 'music codes' and 3.5 million 'music coupons.'"

The same group was behind a recent PBS website breach.

"From a single injection, we accessed everything," said the group. "What's worse is that every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted. Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plain text, which means it's just a matter of taking it."

It was just yesterday (Thursday) that Sony said it was fully restoring its PlayStation Network in the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia. The service was shut down for several weeks after hackers stole customer data.

Sony shut down the network after a massive security breach that affected more than 100 million online accounts and embarrassed the tech giant. The company said last week that credit card companies have not reported any rise in fraudulent credit card transactions as a result of the attack.

Trust no one

What's this mean for consumers?

It means that no one should trust any website to securely manage its treasure trove of consumer information. Consumers should use a different user ID and password for each site and should be very cautious about sharing Social Security numbers, bank and credit card account numbers and any other information that could be used for financial gain.