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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."
Not clear what they are monitoring?
What am I missing? Couldn't somebody just install the program and sniff the information out of the packets?
Gesh, this is slashdot...
Linux can do it just as well as Microsoft and Lexmark! Admittedly, you do have to install it yourself, but the feature is there and just as good as these so called professional vendors can offer!
Beep beep.
Interesting, I just installed ZoneAlarm on a PC last week and it gave me an alarm that some Lexmark process wanted to make a network connection. I havnt had a Lexmark connected to that thing in probably 3 years (and can find no obviously labled Lexmark files) but have been too lazy to reformat the drive. Perhaps it's time to break out the install CDs.
Somehow I don't believe that Lexmark would install this spyware without having the EULA cover it. This may be another example of people just hitting "AGREE" (effectively signing) without actually reading the EULA (a legally binding agrement). Stupid laws? Stupid people? Both? You decide.
We caught a xerox network laser printer trying to send mail, by itself back to xerox; it tried three different outgoing smtp servers that fortunately our gateway blocked.
I don't know what was in those mails - but a google search revealed an article about a large data mining system based on Oracle; I think the main intent was to detect reasons for early failure - but who knows what happened to the data.
Personally I dislike inkjet printers since they usually are causing a mess by spreading the ink everywhere, and the printouts are normally not water-resistant either! Another thing is that the ink cartridges tends to dry up and cause messy pritouts if any if you leave the printer unused for some months. Only way out is to buy a new cartridge.
Laser Printers are a little better, as long as you have a decent vacuum cleaner arond to catch any excess toner. At least they don't mind being offline for a year in decent conditions. (maybe you will have to shake down the toner in extreme cases)
In all, tracking printer use should only be acceptable if the user is notified beforehand, and that the data communicated is easy for anybody to check regarding it's content. The user must be able to disallow any usage tracking.
A legitime use of printer usage tracking that I see is actually to let the printer manufacturer find out the most common errors occured with a printer, and which colors that are most frequently used in order to optimize coming models on the market. But as noted beforehand, the user must have his/hers last say in this. Relate this to the error reporting that Microsoft offers for Windows XP. (Not that it actually catches ALL problems)
My 1/2 cent opinion...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
More likely they would instruct the driver to go into "crap quality" mode. Then they could point to the lousy print you get with 3rd party ink and say "See! Those other ink cartriges aren't as good as ours! Look how much better the print is when you use genuine Lexmark brand ink cartriges!"
At least, that's what I would do if I was a sleazy, money-grubbing corporation....
my router logs all in/out connections and keeps bandwith utilization statistics. Last morning it informed me there is a new firmware update (so it called home). It is also capable to establish VPN tunnels via IPsec so it can send anything it likes without any possibility to examine content. Does it spy on me? Who knows..., but I started to think about installing a normal Linux box instead.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Well, the business model that Lexmark (and HP, Canon, and the rest) follow is that of selling a cheap printer and expensive consumables, with the costly ink subsidizing the initial low price of the hardware. We can all agree on that much, I think. And, honestly, that approach did make a lot of sense when printer technology was improving by leaps and bounds and users were continually tempted to upgrade their equipment. But nowadays, inkjet technology is becoming fairly mature and you really don't see major improvements in price/performance anymore. That being the case, I'd rather pay a hundred bucks more for my printer, right up front, since I'll probably be keeping it for a while, and then pay a more competitive price for the cartridges.
... they wear their unlightened capitalism as a mark of honor. I hope they choke.
Frankly, I think you may have it backward. Lexmark isn't the crack dealer: we are. They get the first hit (i.e., we give them fifty bucks for the printer) and then they keep getting periodic hits every time we run out of ink. The problem is, printer manufacturers have growned accustomed (nay, addicted) to this way of doing business: they like that unending revenue stream from little boxes filled with ink. It's the way of the modern world, i.e. don't just sell somebody something once, sell it to them over and over and over.
I'd like to know how many ink cartridges you have to buy before you've paid them back for the loss they took on the printer itself (assuming they take such a loss, China makes things pretty cheap nowadays) and when those sales start becoming pure gravy. Hell, if Lexmark wants to use those spyware drivers to help their customers they could do this: keep track of the number of times the cartridge has been replaced, and when the company has made back what it lost on the printer sale, send the user a discount card. The user could then take that card to any store that sells Lexmark cartridges and get some money off. Hell, if Lexmark wants to accumulate personal data in spyware fashion they should give something to their customers for the privilege, much like the major grocery store chains do.
Whatever, I really don't like Lexmark anyway and I'm proud to say I've never owned a Lexmark product. Talk about a company that is ethically challenged
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Excellent, sturdy-built printer. Probably one of the best medium-size laser printers that HP ever built. I have one that I found outside sitting next to a garbage dumpster full of old 486 and 1st generation pentium pc's. That's right, I got it for free. Took it home and found all the rubber rollers were nasty and the unit was filled with paper dust and assorted debris. It had never been maintained or serviced since new. I disassembled the unit, vacuumed out all the dust and crap, and carefully cleaned every moving part with isopropyl alcohol, bought a refurbished toner cartridge from OfficeMax for $50 and have had about four years of trouble-free printing at a total investment of some labor and less than the cost of two average inkjet cartridges.
10 sell printer
20 sell inkcartage
30 disable inkcartage via internet
40 goto 20
Hivemind harvest in progress..