This episode of On the Media is supported by Stitcher Smart Radio.

Now podcast listeners can access the latest episodes of On The Media, NPR, and other shows while on the go without downloading or syncing with Stitcher Smart Radio.

Thousands of popular podcasts and programs are available on demand.

Stitcher instantly delivers new episodes of your favorite shows to your mobile phone without syncing or downloading.

Stitcher Smart Radio can be found in the iPhone or Android app stores or at Stitcher.com slash media.

From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is away this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

On April 20th, the PlayStation Network,

the online service that allows PlayStation owners to play games online,

purchase content, and stream movies and audio,

suddenly went dark.

On April 22nd, Sony, the company behind PlayStation, issued a statement explaining that the outage

was due to a, quote, external intrusion by hackers.

Gaming and tech blogs took notice, but the story was largely ignored by the mainstream press,

at least that is, until this past Tuesday, when in a blog post Sony told its 77 million worldwide

PlayStation network customers that because of the attack on its network, their names, birthdates,

home addresses, email addresses,

and credit card data could be at risk.

Additionally, the PlayStation Network, a core component of the PlayStation's functionality,

remains offline with Sony's saying it is hoping that it will be back up by Tuesday, May 3rd, almost two weeks after the initial attack.

Nick Bilton, lead technology writer for the Bits blog at the New York Times, says this is just the latest and by far the largest in a growing trend of personal information making its way out of online entities that we trust

...