Sony recalls 438,000 laptops on burn concern , page 1

Sony recalls 438,000 laptops on burn concern

news.yahoo.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp has launched a voluntary recall of 438,000 Vaio portable computers, citing a potential hazard that could cause the machines to overheat or possibly burn a user.

It is one of the biggest computer recalls since 2006 when Dell Inc recalled 4.1 million notebook computer batteries because they could overheat and catch fire.

Sony's recall affects 72,800 computers in the United States, a Sony spokesman said on Thursday.

I put this here for one main reason... what is the likelihood that these now all too regular laptop recalls by Sony are from intentional poor designs by the company with an eye towards getting hundreds of thousands of users to send their laptops, personal information & all, in to Sony down the road when they decide it's time to do a recall? I'm sure that a large percentage of computer users know enough about computer safety to at least reformat their harddrive prior to sending it in for repair/replacement... but how many also know that the data is still recoverable after a reformat? Technically speaking, you have to jump through some major hoops to render a hard drive truly 'blank'.

Sony could very easily be taking all those returned laptop harddrives and pulling any and all data off of them to use in compiling lists of everything from web surfing trends to email correspondence to sensitive business and personal data and God only knows who they might share or sell such data to. I'm thinking the RIAA, I'm thinking the NSA, I'm thinking foreign interests, and I'm thinking advertising agencies... but the possible list is truly endless.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)