Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print

It's not new, but it's getting noticed: Jordan writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that several printer manufacturers are now and have been for some time embedding (nearly) invisible serial numbers in every document you print with their color laser printers, allowing law enforcement to track any such document back to the printer which printed it. The technology, ostensibly created to track down money counterfeiters, was created by Xerox about 20 years ago. A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'"

Comments

Sketchy

[comwiz56]

This is very sketchy in privacy laws, but it probably doesn't violate anything. Also, it sounds like the printer companies are volunteering the information to the authorities.

Any known way to easily disable this? (Or is it only known by the main-stream counterfeiters, and they don't want to share, for fear of it getting made harded to do?)

standard mischief?

[po_boy]

Time for some non-standard mischief!

http://www.google.com/search?q=non-standard%20misc hief&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

well, I'm out of ideas. Maybe sub-standard mischief?

OT: your sig

[mrchaotica]

You misquoted it a bit. There's no "of course" and it's not "Because;" just "'Cause." I don't have a problem with it or anything, it's just that correcting it would help you fit more of the quote in.

In the old Soviet Union...

[Sensible Clod]

The Party finds YOU!!!

Oh wait...