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Dualshock 4 - WATCH OUT - Lightbar & privacy concern...


HuckleCat

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Last night while getting ready to go to bed, I heard a sound by my TV where I have my game consoles. It sounded like one of them was on.

 

Sure enough, the PS4 was on, and the disc that was in the drive was sticking out, as if ejected. This made me pretty nervous. I did not turn it on, and had done nothing for this to have happened accidentally. I thought about this for awhile.

 

I live in a neighborhood where the houses are somewhat close together, so I guess it possible that either:

 

A - A neighbor has a PS4.

 

Or, more disturbingly,

 

B - Someone was walking around with a DS4 controller, looking for houses where someone may have a PS4. Between Craigslist and Gamestop, that's an instant $400 bucks to steal.

 

Did the DS4 controller have the range though? I am a somewhat paranoid person, so I was hoping I was just overreacting. I decided to test this theorey out and went for a walk with my controller. I turn it on, and wait 30 seconds. Then press X. If the bar goes from white to blue, you found a PS4 owner. It worked in front of my house. More alarmingly, it worked in front of 2 others not close to mine.

 

I know it's somewhat of a stretch, but I feel it's a valid concern, and a good reason to unplug your PS4 when not in use or charging.

 

I'm going to pass this along to Sony and a few other "nerd news" sites. While the light bar is cool, (I guess), it can also be a safety risk.

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That.is.terrible.

No other way to put it. Current gen gaming consoles are a pretty appealing thing to steal, and at this point in the generation cycle can signal that there might be a lot more worth grabbing inside.

 

Edit: thinking about it more, I've been letting my ps3 broadcast its system-identifying ssid ever since I got my psp and that's much easier to spot.

Edited by Reaperman
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I talked to someone at Sony, basically just a low level tech I assume, and they told me that the controller shouldn't work with a unit that it hasn't been synched to.

 

I'm skeptical though, when I asked what my DS4 controller was connecting to away from my house, she had no answer.

 

I'm going to try and track down another PS4 either from a Gamestop or whatever and try it out myself..

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  • 2 months later...

Yeah any DS4 or DS3 (even 360 and Wii and WiiU controllers for that matter) will only turn on a system it is paired/synched to. But thats not to say the system hasn't received some stray interference mistaken that as a turn on signal. Cause both my PS3 and PS4 have turned on by themselves (cause the Bluetooth receiver is always on receiving). But would not eject the disk cause you have to do more then just press the PS button on the controller to eject the disk (press option on the game icon and highlight and press x on remove disk).

 

do you have any animals in the house (being that the buttons on the PS4 are not really buttons) anything that touches then that can conduct electricity can engage the power or eject (this sounds more likely the case as your disk was ejected), if it wasn't a animal maybe static electricity of some form tripped the eject operation, cause pressing the eject button will power the system on and eject the disk.

Edited by madmax2069
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Yah I'm thinking, er, hoping it was my cat. I noticed the eject and power buttons are hyper sensitive. It hasn't happened since that day, and hopefully the controller is in fact tied to the console it's used on.

 

Though I am still wondering what my controller connected to when I took that walk. I don't really want to knock on doors being all "hey guess what?".

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