Sony Can Access Your Device Even When You Aren’t Signed In To PSN. Is It Legal?

via http://wololo.net/2014/02/26/sony-ca...n-is-it-legal/

Sony may have more access to your PlayStation devices than you may know. I encountered something very interesting on my PS Vita, and to be honest with you, I’m not sure if it is legal. Here’s the story.

I had just woken up and got out of bed. My PS Vita was left on overnight and I needed to check my email. so, I put two and two together and figured I should just check it on my Vita. When I tapped the power button to take it out of stand-by mode, I was greeted with to notifications. Both said “The LiveArea screen has been refreshed” one for Video and one for the PSN store. I’m pretty sure you all have gotten it before. It looked like this:



When I saw this, I stood there for a moment and furrowed my brow. I’m a bit paranoid when it comes to companies monitoring what I do, so I only sign into PSN when I have to (by the way why in the frick do you have to be signed in to PSN to use TuneIn and Crackle?). How could my PSN Store LiveArea be refreshed when I wasn’t signed in?



That is the end of my story, now lets get into the speculations. Yes, for those of you that are wondering, my wifi was turned on. Even so, does Sony have any right to access the device that they sold to me, and made a profit off of? I have come up with some possible ways for this disrespectful, unauthorized occurrence.

The first one, how does Sony know I even have a PSN account? How do they even know there is something there to update? They don’t. Then how is it possible for them to do this. Here is what I think, either I am not actually signed out of PSN when it shows I am signed out, or Sony spyware installed on my Vita. I guess that last one seems a bit bogus, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Another, and much more likely possibility is has a database of the IPs of all of the Vita’s out there with a PSN account, and they just send out updates to those ones. They were thinking, “oh yeah we could just send these systems stuff and no one will ever know!”. One little flaw, Sony was expecting that people always stayed signed in to PSN.


I was not signed in.

Well, if it is any of these, (or anything else for that matter) I’m not sure if it is allowed. Since when were people able to send stuff to your devices, legally, without your permission? In this case I don’t really care, I kind of like it when my LiveArea screens are up to date, but to think that Sony has the ability to do this makes me feel violated. Yes, hit below the belt kind of violated.

Yes, this was on my PS Vita, but if Sony can do it there, why not on PS3s and PS4s? I’m gonna set up some proxies now people! In the comments, tell me some of your ideas of how Sony was able to commit this appalling act. That’s all for now from me, The Jay Doctor . I you’d like, I can be followed and contacted on Twitter @The_Jay_Doctor.