I was warned by some that in the unlikely event that my account was somehow compromised through no fault or negligence of my own then by reporting it there was a high probability that my account would be permanently deleted. I thought that was odd and so decided to verify the policy with Sony.

Looking online at their site, I did multiple searches through the knowledge available and perused everything from the FAQ's and posted legal mumbo jumbo. However, it appeared that all that was ever mentioned was, "We are not responsible for securing your computer or network." OK, that doesn't sound unreasonable at all. However, past experience also knew that this could easily be just an ambigious coverall attempt to justify stupid decisions upon their part. I needed hard facts so why not ask their friendly customer service reps (that was before the trend to call it "customer care" appeared I believe).

What happened next seemed at first to be sadly just another fine example of dealing with customer service and tech support today. I first stated my question. Then stated after that more specifics about it, including what I was NOT asking. I also pointed out clearly at the beginning that I had read as much info as I could find on their site and included the relevant FAQ portions that I felt did not fully answer my question. First response back? Noise. It appeared that an automated system went through and mined my question with the customer rep only reading the scripts output. He responded that I look at the FAQ and restated what I myself had quoted in my email regarding their "responsibility." (BTW, my questions were basically "If I take precautions of firewall, anti virus, spyware checking, yadda yadda yadda, what would happen if someone somehow managed to crack my account?" and also "In such a case as this, would Verant and SOE's policy allow banning of the victim's (me) account?")

I responded with a generic statement up front of "please read this email in its entirety as the original query was not addressed" and proceeded to then quote my original question. I really could not think of another way to post it.

This time it seems he read a bit more. He then proceeded to quote from the FAQ how each banning case goes through a review process... yet did not say that it was possible. Time for response numero dos.

This time he addressed the portion of my query about the compromised account review policy... but still did not give a concrete answer as to whether their policy allowed them to ban the victims account. (I had explicitly asked this every time). Well I guess I will fire up another response.

This time I apparently had worn him down a bit (and I refrained from calling him a turdstain or anything else like that) and he testily responded that the security of the accounts was solely the responsibility of the user. He then seemed to use his own words to paraphrase the parts of the FAQ about, "don't give yo