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Are Your Peripherals Monitoring You?
An anonymous reader writes " Engadget is reporting that
'Lexmark, makers of printers and scanners, has been caught monitoring users' printer, scanning, and ink cartridge usage.'" Newsgroup comp.periphs.printers readers noticed the software; the Engadget report says that "Lexmark say they're just tracking printer and cartridge usage, but the registration information and packets being sent say otherwise."
I have a Lexmark Optra E+ laser printer. It's several years old. I'm very happy with it as a printer.
I don't see any c:\program_files\lexmark500 directory even though I have the print driver, downloaded from lexmark.com, installed.
I've added the following to my hosts file just in case.
0.0.0.0 www.lxkcc1.com
Original usenet post from comp.periphs.printers on Google Groups here, or here for a news: link.
lxkcc1.lexmark.comw w.lxkcc2.com
www.lxkcc1.com
lxkcc1.com
w
lxkcc2.com
ips
192.146.101.0 - 192.146.101.255
I recommend the canon multipass series... I have a MP730, its a combo printer/scanner (w/ feeder)/fax/copier, very nice machine. A bit expensive ($300) but IMHO well worth it. The Canon ink tanks are clear so you can see the ink inside them, and there are no chips on them. The printer measures the ink level by shining a light through the tank. They are quite easy to refill, and LaserMonks has replacement tanks for IIRC about $5 each. Replacement official tanks are about $7 each. Four colors, CMYK.
--IronHelix
Get an used (old model) HP Laserjet. They can be found at reasonable prices, with service and replacement parts still available, and it's toner lasts forever. The printer will too, they are some of the most relaiable printers ever built. Too bad HP has been going down the crapper lately.
Laser printers are expensive at a first glance, but the price per page is a fraction of a inkjet. It's overall a much better value.
Still, if you want a cheap one, try the newer Cannon inkjets. You'll still be forced to buy overpriced, half-filled ink tanks, but they work as expected, the printing heads don't clog and the print quality is top notch (for an inkjet). I have a Cannon S1000 at work that has been working perfectly for almost two years now. I wish i could say the same about Epson printers.
I also recommend Canon printers. I have an i970. While not designed intentionally for refilling, it's about as good as it gets these days. As you say, the tanks are just clear plastic boxes with ink in them, refilling is a snap. I've previously refilled Epson and HP, and the Canon is by far the easiest. After refilling Epson/HP, you have to let the ink settle overnight to eliminate bubbles, and do a lot of fiddling to get it printing right. I've refilled my Canon tanks about 15 times so far and haven't had to even do a nozzle cleaning pass once. The printer does automatically do a nozzle clean if it hasn't for a while during idle time after a print job.
The i970 is a 6 color printer, FWIW. Photo printing is quite nice.
Legally binding? I don't think so. EULAs have questionable legal status at best (I'm sure some lawyer could argue for the fact that the fact that the EULA is not printed on the box and the fact that some say "If you do not agree, you cannot install this software" could very well amount to coercion or something. EULAs have never been tested in court.
I would love to see a EULA with some seemingly innocuous yet annoying clause such as "By agreeing to this license, you give everyone the right to call you 'butthead' for the rest of your life." and then have that tested in court. Ideally, there would be one of two outcomes: EULAs become illega or software vendors are legally obligated to accepted returned opened software if the user did not agree to the EULA. (Which means many software vendors would stop stocking software with crap EULAs, and maybe the software industry would get a wake-up call.
And the older crowd here will remember that EULAs didn't always used to suck. They used to be printed in fine print on envelopes containing the CD or floppies, and said in big letters "If you open this envelope, you agree to the license". Which is much better, because if you didn't agree to the license, you could take the software back and if the diskettes were unopened, the place would almost always accept returns.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Which immediately suggests a course of action to "poison" the information pool - register as Darl McBride and start copying something illegal...
Nov/13/2004 09:48:08 Drop TCP Packet From LAN 192.168.0.2:1654 192.146.101.142:80 Rule: Lexmark Block
Nov/13/2004 09:48:00 Drop TCP Packet From LAN 192.168.0.2:1654 192.146.101.142:80 Rule: Lexmark Block
Nov/13/2004 09:47:56 Drop TCP Packet From LAN 192.168.0.2:1654 192.146.101.142:80 Rule: Lexmark Block
Nov/13/2004 09:47:41 Drop TCP Packet From LAN 192.168.0.2:1502 192.146.101.142:80 Rule: Lexmark Block
Nov/13/2004 09:47:34 Drop TCP Packet From LAN 192.168.0.2:1502 192.146.101.142:80 Rule: Lexmark Block
Nov/13/2004 09:47:30 Drop TCP Packet From LAN 192.168.0.2:1502 192.146.101.142:80 Rule: Lexmark Block
and I wonder just how often its trying to phone home.
I've got a Lexmark Z705 on Windows XP with Sygate Personal Firewall.
After installing the printer I noticed the process "LEXPPS.EXE" trying to broadcast and do everything to get onto the network first then the Internet second. I simply don't allow it access because at the time I had a wireless hookup (with no WEP key) and was afraid that someone might try printing to my printer.
Even with that process blocked I could still print "over the network" so it wasn't even an issue and nothing has "broke" since then...
By the way, the process listens on 1026.
Get your Unix fortune now!
When considering the purchase of new hardware, I start by picking something with support already built into my OS. With Linux, this often means the difference between it working or not. With Windows, this means the difference between having to run a dozen tiny third party apps that appear to do nothing at all (beyond take up memory, disk space, and as per this topic, spy on my activities).
It really amazes me when I go to help someone with their PC, and I see a list of startups dozens of entries long. When I see a system tray that stretches halfway across the screen. When their process list requires scrolling down for three pages to see them all.
For a good default policy, when you buy new hardware, throw away any software it came with. You don't need it.
Printers? They all speak PCL or PS (unless you very unwisely bought one that does not, which goes back to "check for driver support first"). End of story.
Scanners? Okay, once upon a time, these could take some work to get up and running. But anything less than five years old (and if older, you can get a better quality replacement literally for around $20)? Free hint - Plug it in, open MS Paint, and check out the "from scanner or camera" menu. Simply amazing, eh? Everything you need to scan, already built in.
Cameras? I had two of my users actually install the software for new cameras we got just this past week. Do you have any idea what a pain it took to remove that software, when they discovered that not only did they not need it, but they couldn't use it due to some vague, irregularly-reproduceable conflict with other software they actually do require? Anyway, point of story - After removing every last trace of Kodak's crappy software (including a very large application, a boot-time driver, and a service! Ack!), I demonstrated to my users that they just need to connect the USB cable and turn the camera on. Poof, all their pictures appear under "My Computer" as a removeable drive named similarly to their camera's model.
How about video cards? Okay, no argument that you would do well to run the newest actual video driver from the manufacturer, but do you have any idea how many people I've see that also have 3Dfx's task manager, NVcpl and Nwiz, or ATi's set of up to half a dozen useless crapware blobs, all loading at startup (I won't even go into startups such as MS Messenger, Office startup, Quicktime, and all the rest that suck memory at the whopping "savings" of 5 seconds the first time you run the relevant program)? Sad. Truly sad, that people let such software steal their memory and CPU cycles.
Okay, I'll grant that more exotic hardware may well require third party support. But that quite simply does not apply to 99% of machines out there.
So I suppose the moral of all this, to stay on-topic... Why do people install Lexmark's own drivers in the first place? Don't ! Use the built-in drivers, and you can get all the same functionality without the spyware or the bloatware.
Not to imply that Microsoft doesn't pull similar crap as Lexmark (time.windows.com, anyone? Which if you run your own NTP server, you will notice does not speak plain ol' NTP). But just because one company likes riding us bareback doesn't mean we need to spread for the rest.
Yes, but nobody has yet. I read this on the newsgroup last week; the two articles in the Slashdot "summary" obviously haven't investigated it beyond quoting these articles.
The news posting in full is: