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Comment by sawyer | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that now Sony's laughable security has become a meme that's growing in strength with every breach.

In the last week I've mentioned Sony's situation to a number of lay people who've never owned a Sony gaming machine but have all heard about these security issues and insist they'll never trust Sony with personal information ever again.

Every time a new headline is printed it strengthens this image.

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they'll never trust Sony with personal information ever again

Fair enough, but Sony isn't in the "personal information" business. They can always create some new company to handle the PSN billing, which is the only personal information that matters to their bottom line.

I doubt anyone would think of PSN as giving their information to anyone other than Sony, regardless of the legal status of it. If this new 'meme' is putting people off Sony, they presumably wouldn't buy a PS4 in the first place, regardless of who handles the billing.

Such divisions rarely will actually occur to someone considering whether to use a Sony product. More generally though, I question that most people are going to think about this too much before buying - they'll think more about the downtime.

> In the last week I've mentioned Sony's situation to a number of lay people who've never owned a Sony gaming machine but have all heard about these security issues and insist they'll never trust Sony with personal information ever again.

No offense, but the tiny sampling size of the few people you talk to doesn't mean anything. The public happily gives more personal information to Facebook than Sony has on them.

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