1) ... of which a significant portion is underage. I wouldn't be comfortable hosting such a service. 2) It's not clear to me this portion of the population is

1) ... of which a significant portion is underage. I wouldn't be comfortable hosting such a service. 2) It's not clear to me this portion of the population is growing, but it does bother me that those people don't get the disdain they deserve (according to me). That said, I think the company in question should be held liable for these kind of breaches. It's your responsibility as an online service to protect the privacy of your users. Even if the service is free you're still obligated to properly secure the service, and if you don't have the expertise to secure it yourself hire somebody to do it for you or don't run the service! I don't expect most of you here to agree with me, in fact, I expect most of you to vehemently disagree. And web services? Reddit: didn't hash passwords, database got stolen. HN? Still doesn't hash passwords, as far as I know. 37signals? Same. The list goes on. Yes, it sucks that people take advantage of lousy security, but in the end I think it's the web service that's been grossly negligent, and I think that we shouldn't accept this kind of malpractice.