Geohot’s new fancy (but against the TOS of the PS3) modified firmware might let you dip into some old-school emulation but it appears Sony are watching, with your recently played games list getting pushed to their servers when you sign into the PlayStation Network (or, indeed, have your PS3 connected at all).

A post over on GAF, where people are trying out the firmware and the apps available, suggests that upon boot the PlayStation 3 connects to a number of various sites and servers to ‘talk back’ to Sony, regardless of whether you’re signed into PSN.  The list is more comprehensive than you might think, with various ad, authentication and secure servers all making up the PS3′s start-up lookups.

Does this mean Sony knows what you’re running on the PS3? Certainly, that’s evident already from the gamercards that automatically populate and show your recent games.  Does this mean they’ll be banning user accounts and/or consoles that appear to have been running customised firmware?  Who knows?

Sony can track your console’s ID, that much is evident.  What they’ll do with that remains to be seen. LINK

Well it seems they learnt from the PSP.

good for Sony, but how many modded PS3 users out there would be hooking up to the internet? surely the vast majority would be offline, and only use a legit PS3 to connect up?

that's what i'd assume anyway...

they won't bann them i think... but probably won't be able to connect through any PSN service...

i hope they ban them if they use piracy

looks like sony can catch a hacked ps3 faster the MS, looks like sony is going to start hiring

Seems people are prefectly fine with spywares in the name of fighting piracy.

I hope Sony could track illegal games to ban the consoles or users.

But homebrews.. like media player or other... it can be fine.

What do you mean with catch ? MS can see them immediately as well, but they only do bans in huge waves.

So far Sony didn't ban any of them either.

Ban them Sony.

Not fine with spywares... but the user agreement of PSN says Sony collect data... so it's legal... and the trophies sync works using these spy features.

That's like all online services... Steam, Live, etc.