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HP and Yahoo To Spam Your Printer

Posted by samzenpus on from the this-expense-report-brought-to-you-by... dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As many suspected when HP announced its web-connected printer, it didn't take long for the company to announce it will send 'targeted' advertisements to your new printer. So you'll get spammed, and you'll pay for the ink to print it. On the bright side, the FCC forbids unsolicited fax ads, so this will probably get HP on a collision course with the Feds."

2 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. You asked for it by wiredlogic · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the article it seems that the ads are part of on demand publications that you choose to have sent to you. So this is definitely an opt-in sort of thing. It is conceivable that printers with preview displays could be perverted to show ads as well but that doesn't seem to be in the works yet.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
  2. Ads aren't supplied with regular jobs. by Jason+Pollock · · Score: 5, Informative

    While the article is a little confusing, if you read it a couple of times, it becomes clear that the advertisements are only supplied with their "scheduled delivery" service. Basically, HP is signing up with content providers and Yahoo to provide content in your printer every morning.

    The subscriber selects the content (newspaper sections), HP is responsible for fetching + formatting + advertisement insertion. Yahoo provides the localised (through IP address lookup) advertisements.

    Basically, this is the Sci-Fi print-on-demand newspaper where the paper includes content from multiple sources.

    So, no, advertisements aren't inserted into the middle of your print job.

    I would say that the demand for the service is probably dwindling, but who knows. It will probably be a good little money maker for HP and Yahoo.