According to a betanews story which is based on a Electronic Frontier Foundation report some printers print mi?nute yellow dots which are some sort of code which has the time, date and serial number of your printer encoded. My printer is not yet listed so im cool but you may be being tracked ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, lmao.
Current list of known tracking printers
I dont care about this for one reason:
There is no way for them to know where the printer came from. Unless they start making people sighn a form telling them that they are accountable for whatever comes from their printer this dosent mean anything. I dont print anything that I would care if anyone saw anyway(I print homework and thats about it.).
What's even more revealing without needing some decoding routine to figure out what printer was used is: When printing with certain Microsoft programs it puts the file path on the printed paper.
rridgely when you say "There is no way for them to know where the printer came from" if you mean there is no way for them to tell were the printed document comes from because there is. Printer manufacturers record all the serial numbers of every batch they send out to retailers so for instance when amazon buy 500 epson printers they no the serials numbers for all of those then intern amazon know the serial number for every printer they sell to the consumer. So if the police find counterfeit documents they get the serial number tell it to the manufacturer who knows who they sold it to i.e. amazon who know who the sold the printer to and bobs your uncle life in prison .
Speaking generally i will be emailing epson about the dots to see if my printer does print the dots because im not a criminal and unless i am convicted of a crime no one has the right to watch or track me in any way.
What I mean is if I walked into an electronics store and paid in cash for a printer how would they have a record of it? They might know what area the printer came from but they wouldnt know specifically who printed it.
That'll work unless you go to a store such as Radio Shack, they require name, address, and phone number even if you're paying cash. However I suppose one could refuse to devulge such information -- what're they gonna do not sell the item.
So if the police find counterfeit documents they get the serial number tell it to the manufacturer who knows who they sold it to i.e. amazon who know who the sold the printer to and bobs your uncle life in prison
Now that you bring that up it does make perfect sense.
I'm almost thinking that law enforcement would be the only people who would have any real usage for such tracking capabilities, it would surely help them in finding counterfeit rings if they could back trace conterfeit paper money to a particular printer and person.
What I mean is if I walked into an electronics store and paid in cash for a printer how would they have a record of it? They might know what area the printer came from but they wouldnt know specifically who printed it.
The printer manufacturer would still know that they sold a certain printer to a certain shop and if credit card or you gave them your name they will know who you are. If not the shop will know when the printer was sold they could then look at the surveillance they will then have your mug shot ready for you .
Now that you bring that up it does make perfect sense.I'm almost thinking that law enforcement would be the only people who would have any real usage for such tracking capabilities, it would surely help them in finding counterfeit rings if they could back trace conterfeit paper money to a particular printer and person.
Exactley
This is just more stupid hype etc. For one, it would only work with color printers. If you only have a black cartridge in there then the yellow dots can't be printed. These sort of "OMG YOUR PRINT TRACKS YOU, OMG YOUR MOUSE TRACKS YOU, OMG DELL LAPTOPS LOG EVERY KEY YOU HIT" are just as stupid as the people who come up with the stories, the people who worry about and believe these things.
The eff who came out with this issue are a respected organization and do allot digital rights related there is no reason whatsoever not to believe them. There are also very few printers if any that are not capable of colour printing nowadays.
I don't doubt that certain governmental organisations have the technology to track anyone they want to. I also believe we are fast approaching the day when censorship of a sort comes to the internet. I'm not happy with either of those events but I don't see there's anything we can do about it.
I read a report recently about a group of people who salvage old pc's from their local dump (in the uk) and sell the pc's on. They said that on 90% of them they found (supposedly) deleted files showing everything from business information relating to specific companies to peoples medical records and financial information. They went on to say that the individuals and companies they contacted in relation to this information were universally shocked as they were convinced that they had securely wiped their HD Drives before disposing of them.
I'm afraid the fact is that we're all being tracked every time we click a mouse or strike a key. I don't like it but it is a fact nevertheless.
It's funny I was watching some scientific program on t.v. and noticed that some enhanced document they showed had three triangle shaped yellow dots on it. Had it not been for this thread I would've just thought it was some paper blemish, and not a tracking system.
This is true. Printer manufacturers do not speak loud about it, but it has been going for quite a while now. Most manufacturers of printers use this technology.
If you send in a printer for repair or if it breaks and get a replacement, they track that too.
I dont own a printer and I am not planning to buy one either, because I dont feel like I need one.
However, if I bought a printer, I would not like it to print this hidden information even if I used it only for school work.
The dots show up in blue light and magnifieng glass I think.