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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.'"
Anyone know any methods of getting around this short of physically ripping apart the printer and soldering a few wires together?
--- "...And everybody died!!! Except for me, of course...you know why? Because I had my tray table up...and my seat ba
This is why I always print my ransom letters using an old daisy wheel printer.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Get dazzling colors, the blackest blacks, and the highest resolution from your new HP Ashcroft.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I mean, seriously. How else would they know who bought it and how to get a name from that serial number? I guess maybe if the store kept your credit card info on file or something and associated it with the serial number, but how often would that happen?
Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!
"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.'"
Although I hear not buying a Xerox printer will.
Printer manufacturers have been doing this for a long time.
Epson inkjet printers, for example, supposedly embed serial codes using droplets of yellow ink in black regions. The serial numbers can't be seen by the human eye, but they apparently can be detected somehow.
Well I'm glad someone else here is reading Engadget and followed the subsequent link to the PC World article.
I sig, therefore I was.
What makes you think we still have such archaic things as privacy laws anymore? Dont you know that if you have a private life the terrorists win?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
not realy, your the one who keeps that infomation, they only way (we'll you'd hope) they'd get there hands on that serial if you done something with the document that was "legaly challanged" =) but this does remind me of the story a few years ago about the printer manafactors having to recall there green inks because it was the same color as dollar bills.
You find some counterfeits, you track the printer, and then what? It's been sold over the counter somewhere to who-knows-whom. That's just a publicity stunt to avoid being ever held responsible for anything done with their printers.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
And as we all know very well, CSI has a machine that will read the code and bring up a 3d map with your current location, a recent photo of you, and a list of every cash purchase you've made in the last six months.
It seems they were ahead of the US by 30+ years. Another sign of a dying empire.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
The technology... was created by Xerox about 20 years ago.
It was 1984 twenty years ago.
...by printing tons of encoded, "dots", so when police read them, they will read, "All Your Base Are Belong to Us!"
The Geek revolution has begun.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Does that include a Louisville Slugger?
Ha, they don't know who they're dealing with if they think that they only need to protect their devices against standard mischief.
Oh, sorry. Wrong discussion.
Here's a worse one:
Did you know that every time you touch something, you leave an invisible mark that's unique to you and can be used to track where you've been?
It's a privacy nightmare.
I somehow think that applying whiteout isn't an acceptable way around the problem for the types of task that this technology is an issue!
:S
"Yeah, it's a hundred dollar bill!"
"What's with the massive amount of tippex on it?"
So use substandard mischief. :p
I'm quite serious really. Unless the serial number is tiled, just print a full border and keep whatever stuff you want to cut out away from the serial.
If it is tiled, you have a number of options. You could script a program to 'split' the image so that you print unmarked bands in multiple runthroughs which eventually add up to a full image. You could offset some unknown amount and then surround the serial number with other sequences to disguise the actual serial (would take some knowledge of how serials are assigned to do a good diguise). Both of those would require a little hardware modification. But if you're printing $100 bills. . . .
Anyway, those are just some ideas off the top of my head. The point is that if people know what they're up against, they can find a workaround. Ideally, these kinds of tricks would be kept secret. In the case, the point is trip up ignorant cons who don't account for something they don't realize exists.
Oh well. This will still nail the 16 year old delingquents who decide to pull a fast one on the clerk at their local grocery store.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Well, looks like it's back to cutting out newspaper headlines to make my blackmail notes.
All your prints are belong to us
http://melbournephilosophy.com/
This is old news.
There have been news stories about serial numbers being embedded in printing for years. The first I read of it, at least 7 or 8 years ago was the same yellow microprint from color inkjet printers, which was mandated by the U.S. Gov't, to prevent counterfit bills from being printed.
All I've ever done myself is scan in bills at the highest resolution, to show people the microprint (note the double lines around the portrait, one is really text).
It actually doesn't stop anything, people still print them. I remember back in high school there was a story in the local paper about some kids getting dragged away by the Secret Service for photocopying $1 bills and putting them in soda machines. They only had to do one side, and it didn't care about the color, so easy drinks. Our school had a better 'hack'. If you took a water pistol and sprayed water into the bill slot, it'd short out the electronics of it, and you could push buttons all day to get free drinks. I saw it done a few times.
But hey, just assume that anything you print is being tracked. Chances are pretty good that nothing you print is going to be all that interesting.
Extremely paranoid? Pay cash for your printer, and get someone else to actually purchase it. Or don't leave home, because 'they' may be watching. Ha!
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's more like a fingerprint... find a suspect through the usual methods, and the get a search warrant for his printer. If the two samples match, you can build a case on some strong evidence.
It's not a magic bullet, just another tool for law enforcement.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I don't have so much a problem with the technology in this case, but the lack of disclosure by the companies that produce this stuff (or the agencies that "suggest" they do so). I have no idea whether HP discloses this feature in their manuel, but I know when it was revealed that photoshop now has "anti counterfit technology" embedded in it that no one was told about, people were more than a little irate.
But as many HP color lasers I've seen that have all 'Xs' for their serial nos (XXXXXXXXXXXXX) - this wouldn't do much of any one any good for anything.
And yes - it's possible to re-set the serial numbers via the front panel, on quite a few of the HP colors.
Now, to just verify that this *is* the serail no that's being 'microprinted' on each page.....
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
Nobody prints with green ink. That's a primary color in RGB, and surely nobody prints in RGB. The printing primary colors are CYMK: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and blacK. No green.
I hate to break your "They can't stop me i pay cash" party, but i think the idea of these serial numbers is so that if the police suspect someone and have evidence to get a warrant tehy can use printer data to secure a conviction.
And if all the tape shows is the back of your head then they can pull out the special software that zooms in on the eyeball of the clerk making the sale to get your reflection!
Then they'll just run it through the special face recognition software!
You've been watching a little too much CSI.
The printer has a hidden GPS receiver (yes it works indoors even inside a cave, it's very sophisticated you know), every time you print something, the current location of the printer is also imprinted in yellow using a secret code impossible to detect by human eye. So, there you have it.
I never worry about this stuff because unlike some people, I don't race to fill in that warranty/registration card in the box with all my personal information.
The local retailers I deal with will warranty these items with nothing more than a reciept, which doesn't have any kind of personal information on it. On top of that, if you pay cash (not with a CC/Bank card) how is this serial number useful to them?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Just curious, but when was the last time someone sold a printer with green ink? Color printers have been CMYK (or more) for as long as I can remember. (Maybe the 7 color ribbon for the ImageWriter II???)
This sig intentionally left justified.
A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser...'
...just past this little doohicky, but to the right of the thingamuhwhachit, but if you get as far as the whatchamacallit you've passed it....
Darn engineers and their technical mumbo-jumbo....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
If I were doing something that I wouldn't want traced back to me, I would assume that any printer would leave unique markings on the paper, on purpose or not. Bullets have rifling marks, tires have unique markings, etc. Those aren't intentional. Also, the paper might be traceable in the same way.
:)
You can bet there's tricks they don't advertise on the discovery channel, particularly the intelligence agencies.
You can't be paranoid enough.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I've heard that they burn the drive's serial number into every copy they make. Any truth to that?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I just hope they don't have to check my wang as evidence.
Laws are easy to make. Getting rid of tracking technology once it's there is hard.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
This is hilarious for several reasons.
1) I never register a printer with the manufacturer after I purchase it. I also don't know anybody else who did either. It's a waste of time and an invasion of privacy.
2) Let's say a printer was never registered - and it was paid for with cash at a store like Best Buy. Good luck tracking down the buyer.
3) Even if both the above were not true and the manfucturer knew who originally bought it, one word foils their plans: Ebay. If you buy a printer on ebay, who knows how many hands it's been through before yours. While it is still possible to track it after a sale on ebay, it just got a whole hell of a lot harder.
You don't know what you are up against and I question your ideals. That's the problem with non free software and this crap is definitely non free. This trick is 20 years old, how do you know what other patterns they put in? Subtle changes in letter spacing, and other color manipulation can do the same thing. This kind of thing is very disturbing.
This is an area where software freedom directly affects real freedom. Speech without anonymity is not free. "Big deal," you might say, "they know a printed page came from a particular printer. So what?" So, if you are using a non free operating system, your print driver might have a back door that responds to requests for information and your ISP can be forced to reveal what IP the correct response came from. Zip, zip, just like that, without any help from retailers, you can be tied to what you thought you were publishing anonymously. You think you are going to get around it with an old typewriter? You might as well be the only person in your city making woodblock prints because everyone will know you are the nutcase with antique printing equipment. The Xerox down at the corner copy shop can put it's mark on every copy you make, and it won't take much doing after that to uniquely identify you.
The free software foundation and RMS' comparison of non free software to the old Soviet Union, where copy machines were numbered and guarded are right on target.
You could script a program to 'split' the image so that you print unmarked bands in multiple runthroughs which eventually add up to a full image.
I suppose you could simply shred your work, but that's what an oppressive government would want anyway. Tell on yourself, throw you work away and wait for the trip to Minilove, the place where there is no darkness.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Anybody able to see them yet? - I printed a page on a xerox 7700 and scanned it into PShop - Checked the blue channel and it looks like a set of verticle alligned alternating columns (apx 20-30 pix apart) of dots apx 3-6 pixals each of a yellow value...
-jh
"we'll you'd hope" is the key.
Say you print some literature that the government doesn't like. There's all sorts of things the government doesn't like. It doesn't (at least the current republican government) like abortion, marajuana legalization, protests against the war in iraq. You print these up and post them around, pass them out. Laws don't change themselves, it takes action. Disagreeing with a current law is perfectly legal but in the current climate in America might be considered subversive. So if you print them on these printers the FBI can track you down, build a file on you, and perhaps bring Joseph McCarthy back from the dead you commie, tree hugging, pot smoking hippe. That's just an example. Of course you could print money and then the secret service would track you down.
That knowledge would take lots of study to learn and you could never be sure. Printers with enough sophistication to detect currency and refuse to print can pull lots of tricks on you if it detects pattern prints and other investigations. A blank page needs no identification marks at all and the printer may refuse to print any. Subtle variation in letter spacing or shape can have the same effect. Do you know exactly where each pixel in each character you print are supposed to go? Missing pixels can encode a serial number as well as those that are not supposed to be there.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Paralegal school?" I'll thank you not to refer to Clown College in that way.
*honk honk*
Just print on yellow paper when you don't want to be traced and the whole problem goes away. Doesn't work for counterfieting currency- but should work for the odd ransom/extortion note.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
'standard mischief won't get you around it.'
Now that every hacker on the internet knows about it that chip has a life expectancy of . . . maybe friday.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
What are the chances that this is in PROM that is burned internally once the serial number is assigned? If so, overwrite it with a new code, perhaps through an undocumented command to the printer controller. After all, you don't think each of these chips is uniquely made, or that they don't have to do something like this to keep them all properly matched to the corresponding external serial numbers.
Or is it RAM, loaded by the firmware on each power-up? Then change your internal printer serial number. Those things are set during manufacture somehow.
Or look up Xerox's patent on the process.
Or swap your yellow, cyan, and magenta toners around, and make the corrections in Photoshop to get the desired image with the transposed colors. They'll be looking for the wrong color dots.
Or add lots of dots of your own.
Ever notice that this isn't the only anti-counterfeiting technology that likes to use yellow. Why is that?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"standard mischief won't get you around it."
It's nice to know that tinkering with a machine I bought and paid for is now referred to as "mischief." I didn't realize they started "licensing" hardware the way some people do software.
When you install the driver, significant information is sent back to the printer vendor's website.
What kind of information do you think is sent back to them?
Unless you can print this using Linux CUPS driver at 4800x4800 (which I've yet to see one).
Ok... how's this look?
1). Make your money in your favorite photo editing software.
2.) Take it to CompUSA/MicroCenter/Frys on a USB Thumb Drive.
3.) Pop the thumb drive into one of those new printers with the ability to print from there.
4.) Print Cash in one of their demo printers.
5.) Use Cash to buy printer.
6.) Return Printer.
7.) Get Real Cash.
8.) Profit.
Seems complex, but... I have to run... I'm off to CompUSA.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Crean describes the device as a chip located "way in the machine, right near the laser" that embeds the dots when the document "is about 20 billionths of a second" from printing.
what is this gibberish? Why can't the say it's on a chip built into the printer rather then spouting off about the time it takes the electrons to go from the printers CPU to the laser driver.
The aggravating part is that an upright citizen should not have to go to such great lengths. It seems that 20 years ago, Uncle Sam decided that there should be no more anonymous publications or did not take steps to prevent that from happening.
Free software helps, but electronic publication is just about impossible and everything you do will have to be checked with a hexeditor. How can anyone effectively communicate without the benefit of digital cameras, for instance? Every little gadget with a serial number is a potential give away. OpenBSD might be good for this, but most free software is built with openness in mind. I used to think OpenBSD was paranoid, now I'm thinking they were right all along.
You might find some comfort in the fact that your software is not ratting you out, but you have still lost a considerable fraction of your privacy and ability to publish anonymously. When you buy that printer at the swap meet, you can be sure the previous owner was not as careful as you. It will still be linked to a particular city, and further "terrorist" investigation will lead the domestic spys to the swap meet. That's way more information than a government agency would have for an analog printing press. You won't be able to use that printer for anything but your anonymous printing and you will have to keep that on the QT. Analog printing, of course, will stand out like a sore thumb.
I don't even want to think about how bad things will get with widespread RFID tag use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Anyone in the business of repairing any full color laser printer, photo copier etc, is usually told of this in certification class. At least it is when I go to school on these. On our full color copiers & printers, they specifically tell us that if you attempt to make a color copy of any "money" it will lock up, requiring a phone call to unlock it, and a visit from someone in a black suit and dark glasses LOL. We make a blank copy, and get out a high power loop, and you can see the faint yellow microdots that contain the information. A few years ago, some idiot bought a full color copier, and started on one end of the country, driving to the other end passing off phony money. When the treasury agents got the copies, they looked up the serial number and traced it back to the dealer who was more than happy to supply the information, and they got the guys vehicle info (he wasn't smart enough to fudge his name, etc when he bought it) and they caught up with him, with the machine in his van, and loads of fake bills. Personally, I don't care if they put serial numbers on this, you can't see them anyway, plus, if you are STUPID enough to forge documents, you deserve what you get!
You have to do that with every color and it will probably make it impossible to print. If they designed the print so every pixel is a single bang, there are no lower frequency signals.
Worse, this would have no effect on something subtle like line or character spacing, which could encode a serial number the same way a bar code does. Proper equipment can be set up to detect line spacing serial numbers despite scale and rotation distortion.
If you don't know what the signal is, your noise might not be helping you.
What you know is that the US government and every major printing company have conspired to make it impossible to print a document that can not be tied back to the printer. That's creepy and it lends weight to stories that once you might have dismissed as paranoid delusions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have seen several arguments here that this is a perfectly harmless technology, and some of those arguments have been logical and valid. However, it still begs one question: If it is such a useful, valuable technology, why are the manufacturers not informing the customers of this "feature" in their instruction manuals or on their packaging? I checked the websites of Canon, HP, and Xerox, including the specifications of several laser printers. In none of the feature or specification listings is it said "Prints unique serial number to easily identify printer of every document!"
If this technology is so useful, wonderful, and defensible, please feel free to inform those who pay money for your products. They might have a different view to give you. There are legitimate reasons to remain anonymous. (Even if that's just that you want to.) A desire for anonymity doesn't mean that you're doing something illegal, and that mindset is extremely dangerous, getting into the "Well if you don't want cameras in your living room, what do you have to hide?" territory.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
It's not "tracking everything I print". It's tracking everything printed on my printer that winds up in the hands of law enforcement. It isn't tracking everything I burned or shredded. As a non-criminal, why should I have a problem with paper documents I am distributing being traced back to me? Allowing people to anonymously print documents like Thomas Paine's Common Sense would just get people all riled up and start revolutions anyway...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
And is there a page on the web with the "uncopyable" pattern of little circles that identifies European money and prevents printing? That would make a useful background image for web sites.
Print a Windows Test Page with the color logo in the corner. Use a 10x jewelers scope and a bright flashlight (LED works. Where there is NO print, focus on the paper fibers. You can see the many very tiny yellow dots. 1/600 dpi is really tiny.
Also, the 'chip' recognises USA and foreign currency, and will discolor any duplication slightly off (ie. greens will be dark or too light). Btw, SS contacts Canon who said to who they shipped the machine. Dealer had better know who they shipped it too.
Read: http://www.sgrm.com/art20.htm
5'16" is easy math, so why do so many miss it?
Technology like this is what forces American criminal organizations to outsource their counterfeting and ransom operations overseas. You're putting American criminals out of work!
Up till now I've always assumed the dots I saw (usually in empty areas, and always in a regular, widely-spaced square grid pattern) were the scanner picking up the paper tone as a very light yellow and trying to dither to match. But was I actually seeing these anti-counterfeiting dots? And if so, was I committing a felony by removing them? :)
I never noticed our Tektronix color lasers (780/7700) putting them on its output, nor the Xerox DocuColor four-color xerographic copiers (DC12/DC2045/DC6060), although the only ones I really gave the eagle-eye inspection to a lot were the DC output since the Teks were in the customer area and we usually only heard about those when they were out of toner or paper. You could see them on the customer originals if you really looked and turned the paper so the light shone off the toner, but you wouldn't notice them if you weren't looking for them.
And if any of you out there in Kinko-land have a grid chart in your store that gives you enlargement and reduction proportions so you don't have to play with the damned wheel, yeah, I made up that chart.
-- Old Man Kensey
I used to work at a check printing company. My gut feeling is that this smacks of a manipulative urban legend rather than a real technology.
Yes, I'm sure that it is feasible with today's technology, but the expense of doing this on all color printers in the low profit margin color printer market makes me dubious. It will take a law to get all the suppliers to comply and create an "even-playing field" of expense for everyone. The patriotism Xerox demostrates may be commendable that their products are more trackable but it isn't profitable.
Looking at the problems with the coordination of the ISBN book publishing numbers or the social security numbers makes coordiantion of a secret serial number system that's shared between international suppliers even more absurd. "Oops, we accidentally re-used the secret id numbers for the Xerox printers with these knock-off Zerox printers for Tiger Direct."
Finding the serial number is a good first step. Refill an empty toner cartridge with black toner. This will not tell you the serial number (you'll have to do comparisons between printers of the same model to get that), but the presence of the serial number should be easier to find. If it's not there with the black toner then it's either a more subtle technology (modulating the laser itself?) or it's not going to be found.
The great thing about color laser is its comparative cheapness. Dye Sublimation printers were what the check people would use for very impressive mock-ups, but the dye refills were very, very expensive compared to the laser printer refills. Still, when someone in the art department wanted to make a fake United Federation of Planets Passport, they'd go for the dye sub printer when the boss wasn't looking.
Um, I hate to tell you this, but while the US$ may not be "real" in the sense that it directly represents an actual commodity, there is no less trust involved in a gold-backed currency. First of all, how do you actually verify that the apparently gold-backed dollars in your wallet are actually backed by gold? You'd have to turn them in and trust that you'd actually get some amount of gold in exchange. And how do you know that the gold you own is actually worth something? While gold is actually useful, it certainly doesn't have enough intrinsic value to justify its market price. It's value is primarily derived from the speculation of others like you who trust that it will have some enduring value and is therefor a safe investment.
An interesting story: a friend and co-worker of mine is from Bosnia, and lived with his family in Sarajevo during the war. His mother had saved her gold and jewels believing that they would help them during (or after) the siege. Before the end, however, she ended up trading most of them (they'd be worth a couple thousand dollars, now) for a dozen eggs. It just goes to show the extent to which the relative value of anything can change based on the current situation.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Nobody prints with green ink.
Nobody at home, maybe. Commercial printers print with all kinds of ink. If a pamphlet, coupon, or package only needs a few colors in block graphics (no complex shadings), it's more practical to use exactly the colors of ink needed than to uce CYM. Color alignment is simpler, and you use less ink.
Q&D example off my shelves: Dove soap. The package is has only four colors, two for text, one for solid graphics, and one shaded. The printer used four colors: black, deep bluish-green, light bluish-green, and gold.
The hardback editions of The Neverending Story were also printed with a bluish-green ink.
Or think of green-lined ledger pages; you think a printer is going to go to the trouble to line up a cyan and a yellow run when he can do one green run and be done with it?
So it's entirely plausible that an ink manufacturer or a commercial printer had to abandon a particular variety of green ink as being too close to one of the government's protected shades.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
I wonder if running the same sheet of paper, printed as a blank page, thru 10-20 printers if it would garble this registration info to the point of uselessness?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Here's two:
:-)
1. Just grab a drink. This works on some machines,
with some choices of drink, if you have long and
skinny arms.
2. Put two pieces of 2-inch clear packing tape
together, so that the sticky side is in. On one
edge, include 1/8 inch of a bill. So about 98% of
the bill is not taped. Give yourself about two
feet of tape hanging off the bill. Soon after the
bill goes in, yank it out.
Note: only do this if you have permission from
the machine's owner.
Depends on your definition of freakin' expensive.
A froogle search for color laser printer pulls up hits under $500. That's roughly a two days wages for me, certainly not freakin' expensive by my definition.
I imagine most people could afford one if they really wanted it. A few months of saving up (hell if you're a smoker, quitting would get you the cash pretty quick), or a simple credit card purchase with making the minimum payments would easily do it for most I think.
That would be yet another argument against closed source software. If it can tattle to the cops then it can tattle to others. No such backdoor should be present, period. If the shenanigans are implemented on the printer itself then a few simple packet filter rules will damn well keep its traffic contained.
Surely someone here has a recent vintage color laser printer and a magnifying glass. Can you actually see the dots? Are there a lot on the page, any discernible pattern?
When I took HP's indian tech support weenie to task for this, he tried to insist that there was no spyware (acting all nervous and flustered that I'd make such an insinuation).
I said, "Dude, I can see the packets flowing out my ethernet port as the driver is installing, don't try to lie to me."
He replies (in that oh so Indian way of speaking), "Fine, go ahead, jou won't be able to use dee scanner, but jou ken install just dee driver files." (huffing in exasperation)....
And you thought Dale Gribble was paranoid, I'll show you paranoid....
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
The Canon BCi9900 Photo printer uses Red and Green
l ac k_and_Color_Ink_Tanks_8_Pack_i9900_Photo_Printer
inks..
http://www.dealtime.com/xPC-Canon_Canon_BCI_6_B
Basically any inkjet could be refilled with whatever color you like as long as the properties were compatable with the printhead nozzles.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
OK, let me get this straight..... 20 billionths of a second..... In order to fit 4 bits (assuming 4 bit words as laser commands, best-case scenario, and assuming serial) in as the laser is firing..... you would need 160GHz bandwidth, plus the overhead of the actual "data" to get through. I don't think ribbon cable is quite capable of this inside a printer.
Combined with the "millimeter sized" dots, I think we have an extreme exaggeration of the facts.... I don't think we can trust the "about every inch" on the page either. More investigation is required.
... or that it just might give the FBI 10-20 times more clues on where to find the used printers.
Privacy is terrorism.
I've heard numerous times that the Christian right was a leading force in getting this legislation passed- on Christian TV no less- almost like they're proud of it.
I guess all this rebate crap really is a government conspiricy.
Hardly any of us bother to send in any product registration crap. If you have the receipt you've covered for warranty issues.
But, entice you with a bogus $50 rebate ( which you may or may not get 6-8 weeks later ) and many will gladly give their home address, email address, phone number. Cash the rebate check and you give up your banking info too ( all that stuff they print on the back of the check when you deposit it.)
If you plan on doing naughty things with your laser printer you'll have to pay cash (not at Costco ) and blow off the rebate.
Didn't they ID the first World Trade Center bombers when they tried to get the deposit back on the van? Doesnt pay to be greedy.
And if you dont They've already won
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I just happened to be shopping for color laser printers today. After going to some stores to play with them, check the web, we made up a test PDF and loaded drivers on our laptop for all the printers in the running and went to the store and printed our own test pages.
We had mostly settled on the low-end Minolta 2300DL because it does a better job with photos than the other sub-1K devices. We were also considering the Oki c5150n that has shinier and noisier color output, but surprisingly better text printing. I then ran across this story tonight. How irritating.
I whipped out my Photon black-light LED and a magnifying glass and there they were. Little yellow dots everywhere on the Minolta output. They are visible with the naked eye in white/unprinted areas because the dots are a slightly different reflectivity than the rest of the paper. A magnifier and black light and it stands out.
The Oki c5150n printer did not appear to print the spray of yellow dots, for whatever that is worth.
We are likely to use the printer with our letter head on it in nearly all cases, so that would make 99% of the documents more directly trackable, but it sure is a big put-off to have to add this into the equation of what to buy. More a principle than it is a practical concern.
But how much is this going to cost me, for this extra feature? The toner for these things is NOT cheap.
So is there a list of what printers and manufacturers do this? Anyone else have any hardware they can check output from?
> police (I give them money every year)
;-)
Ouch!
Hopefuly you favor cash so there's no need to worry - unless you use a laser printer to print their names and amounts on the evenlope!
If you print on yellow, and yellow ink is used, it does not stop those that have the means from seeing the ink...it just makes it harder. Yellow ink on yellow paper is unreadable by the human eye perhaps, not impossible to read through chemical analysis.