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HP and Yahoo To Spam Your Printer
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."
...is a coupon for ink.
I'm sure HP will do their best job to protect the access to these web-based printers. It will take an entire week for the spammers to get HP's database and start sending ads to your printers.
Also: The article is unclear, but it doesn't sound like HP will just send random print jobs with ads to your printer. It sounds more like *if* you setup the feature to print your newspaper every morning, the ads in the paper will change to be targeted. That is why they can claim "What we discovered is that people were not bothered by it [an advertisement]..." If they truly are sending advertising jobs to the printer unsolicited, then I think that quote is going to turn out to be the dumbest thing said on planet earth for at least the last few years. People would just love to find their already exorbitantly priced ink wasted on an ad.
Lastly: Who would want to print their newspaper in the morning? Physical newspapers are convenient because of their wide format. Electronic news is nice because it is targeted and doesn't waste paper. Printing out your newspaper in the morning seems like the worst of both. You don't get the nice wide format, and you still waste the paper. Ugh.
The scheduled delivery sounds kind of cool...course, if I have to walk over to my printer to get it, why wouldn't I just turn on the computer sitting right next to it?
But if you're going to put ads on my paper, you dang well better be paying me for it.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
When I am printing my very important sales proposal - and HP/Yahoo inject spam into it - and this costs me my sale .... I can sue their balls off yes?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
But really this is Quid pro quo, HP give you access to "free" services - in this case the web elements and in return you have to put up with a few adverts. It is in no way different from how GMail or HotMail operate. Will it cost you ink and make HP money, yes, but will you get the ability to e-mail printed documents to your printer and to automate printing web-content, also - yes.
If you want an honest printer than invest in a Kodak already -- or better yet a laser printer for B&W documents.
Assuming you can't disable the feature I'll be firewalling it's IP address completly
Normal people worry me!
No, faxes come through a series of wires. These ads come through a series of tubes. Completely different!
My HP photo printer has a touchscreen LCD. I think most have an LCD of some sort. I can imagine HP thinking they could reserve some of the space for ads...
bp
Me: "Hello, Kodak? Yes, I'd like to buy one of your printers as long as you don't spam me with ads."
Kodak: "Sure, not a problem. We aren't like HP."
Me: "Awesome, I'll take ten."
Of course that wasn't a real conversation, but if I had the money for ten printers, you better believe I'm giving my money to Kodak (or Canon, Canon makes good printers).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I am dumbfounded by HP's decision-making here. "What we discovered is that people were not bothered by it [an advertisement]," Nigro said. "Part of it I think our belief is you're used to it. You're used to seeing things with ads."
That sounds like a ringing endorsement for the printer. "Buy our printer! It will make you feel all warm and cozy because it has ads, like everything else in your life!" Ugh. It's appalling.
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.
They'd be wasting the effort sending that garbage to me. I'd refuse to buy into whatever it was just out of principle. Send me an ink allowance and i don't really care as long as it doesn't start printing ads on my school papers. Lol The cost of an ink cartridge is more expensive than half of the printers themselves. Firewall it. :/
By purchase agreement of the free or subsidized printer? By perhaps getting a request to print on the lcd screen? Or maybe a popup on the computer that offers free coupons?
Not to say it won't be sleazy. Not to say people won't be surprised by the ads.
First let me say, I, like most of slashdot readers absolutely hate this crap. But to play Devil's advocate, suppose some consumers are not opposed to this kind of business relationship. Suppose they actually find value in it (ignoring the fact the you and I may consider it some kind of wrong). Should it be allowed to continue? I see insane ad practices happening time and time again. Sometimes they catch on and become normal. Other times they disappear (often quickly) as consumers revolt against them. Often, the ones that stick don't bother "normal" people. Whether it should or shouldn't is another topic, I guess. Where do you draw the line?
My view is that our outcries against this stuff have their place. Hopefully it makes "normal" consumers more aware. Hopefully. Sometimes these practices stick. Sometimes they don't. Maybe the ones that do are a fair tradeoff. My concern is that the absurdity and intrusion escalates.
There is a problem. Ads want to be targeted. We want to hate ads. Maybe it will always be that way. The best we can don is to keep people conscious so at least they're aware of what they could possibly be giving up when allowing them into their lives.
This printer thing. I don't see how it will stick. But HP and Yahoo! are sure as Hell going to see. Let's just hope it doesn't set a precedent, or at least some kind of civil middle ground can be found.
I absolutely hated Yahoo's new login screen. There was a Chevy Ad that took up the whole page. What I did like was the fact that there was a forum at the top of the screen to provide feedback on the ad. This is a new trend in my opinion. Let's hope our outcries continue to bring about changes like this.
This is such an obviously, outrageously bad idea that it boggles the mind. If HP goes ahead with such a plan it will richly deserve the universal drubbing it will receive. HP would have difficulty escaping the wrath of the marketplace and the brand would be severely tarnished for years to come.
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.
My Lexmark printer driver is around 3 bytes long. I dumped HP when their driver crossed the 200MB level and installed a bunch of background processes.
I didn't buy a computer to run HP software I bought it for many things a very small thing being to occasionally print. But HP seems to want to pretty well turn my desktop into an HP dedicated print server.
I have only "Office Spaced" one electronic device in my life and it was my HP all-in-one. It was very satisfying to smash the crap out of it. All that thing was built for was to get me to buy ink. Every time I turned it on to scan the thing would go through this 2 minute cleaning cycle and use up some more ink. I would literally go through more than half an ink cartridge without printing a thing. A printer that uses ink when I am only scanning is just stupid. Then when it ran out of ink the whole menu system basically wouldn't let me get past the no-ink-complaining so that I could do hardly anything else with the printer. It wasn't an all-in-one is was a single purpose ink selling machine.
So no surprise that HP is figuring out a way to screw their customers even harder. "Yes I bought your printer so that you could make money selling advertising." Or maybe people buy printers to print stuff; their own stuff.
HP's ePrint printers, some of which will become available next month, are connected to the user's home router, which means they will have an IP address.
Good luck getting your users to correctly configure their routers to make this work.
You think if they started advertising for penis enlargement that they'd start going for my 11x17 tray just to prove a point/overcompensate?
I'm sitting next to a Brother ink jet printer right now. I really prefer lasers, but in this case I wanted a large format multi-function machine. My Brother will both print and scan up to 11x17" (equivalent to A3) and it cost me less than $200, shipped to my front door. It shipped with full, high-capacity ink cartridges, not HP's half cartridges. And while it does include some software it's pretty lightweight, and is basically used to handle features like networked scanning and a monitor program to let you know when the ink is low. Both are optional. And yes, Brother explicitly offers drivers for Linux.The print quality is what it is -- could be better, could be a lot worse -- and the build quality seems fairly plasticky, but that seems par for the course with today's printers. Overall my only complaint was that the price was so low it wasn't even a significant tax write-off.
Breakfast served all day!
You mean these printers will ALSO leak out possibly sensitive information to the world (Yahoo) in order to target the advertisements that will be printed using the owner's ink and the owner's paper?
Talk about the mother of all bad ideas. Even if this printer was FREE with these ad subsidies, you still have to pay for ink cartridges that are excessively expensive and the paper as well, so this will also add to waste and user costs.
I guess this is just another in my long (and ever growing) list of reasons why I will never, EVER purchase a HP inkjet printer. I suggest everyone else vote with their wallets and abandon support for HP in favor of another company that doesn't steal information about what their users print in order to make users PAY with the ink they purchased to print advertisements based on information swiped from those very same users!
This signature is lame.
What fucking bright spark in marketing thought this would be something ANY customer would want their printer to do, and what idiot manager approved it on the basis that people would put up with it? Someone should bill them for the paper, ink and recycling costs. $1000/picoliter isn't it? Fuckers!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I've been able to print from off-site for years. I just have to tunnel in through a firewall to get at my printer so that I don't act as the building charity copy center, but how is any of this new?
and Google out by calling ''targeted' advertisements" a mistake.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I got rid of a Lexmark because their inkjet printers had ink that was too expensive, though, so pay attention to the model as well as the brand.
I was also unhappy with Lexmark for trying to abuse the DMCA to lock people out from making compatible ink cartridges.
It's not "your" printer. You don't own the software in the printer, or the driver, or the service that handles spamming you. You're just licensing that. You're renting a printing service, and the landlord controls what you can do with the printer. Read your EULA.
there is not a single thing that REQUIRES paper in todays age.
A paper aeroplane? Try that with your laptop you'll have to get a new one.
With all the crap HP are doing lately, you would have to be stupid to buy a HP printer.
Get a printer from a decent company such as Canon or Epson or Brother.
It's bad enough that HP printers INSIST on printing a test page seemingly every time you cycle the power, or remove and reinsert a cartridge after shaking it to see how much ink is left.
It's bad enough that they insist on bundling over 100 fucking meg of software when all you really want is the bloody printer driver.
It's bad enough (environmentally) that it's probably more economical to buy a new printer that comes with "free" starter cartridges than to buy replacement cartridges for your existing printer ... at least here in Philippines prices about 1500 pesos ($33 USD) for a printer, and 1700 pesos ($37 USD) for a b/w and color cartridge.
Now they're being allowed to spam your printer with internet ads (full colour of course) ?
Fuck HP, tired of their bullshit.
Everyone keeps saying "Firewall it!", but that defeats the purpose of the printer, which is to allow email-printing from HP's servers. If it can't get sent stuff from HP's servers, you can't email to it, but if it can be sent stuff from HP's servers, HP can send SPAM. Unless you've got a computer in between that does image recognition of any postscript attachments coming across the pipe, and edits out HP SPAM, you might as well just buy a model without the email feature.
Well, I'll just add this to my list of why I hate HP...
-300 MB printer drivers
-$30 for a ketchup packet of ink
-hardware\software designed to actually lie about ink levels
-scanner and other bundled software that simply does not work
-software takes over your computer as bad as QuickTime and AOL
-And now, advertisements directly sent to your printer!
At what point do we just start referring to HP as malware vendor?
I think of HP as one of the companies that people go to solve a simple problem, printing, and these people have learned to accept the terrible deal as a necessary evil, because they need to print, and HP = printing. It is like all the poor folks paying for the $100 Adobe Acrobat + 1 GB install process when there are other PDF creation tools that are free and better.
HP is making tons of money off of by being a synonym for printing. Everybody that knows better has already left, and the people still around buying will just accept this new thing, ads on their printer, as just another necessary evil. I think it will hurt them though. Even my less tech-savvy friends are pleased with how their new Brother printer or other brands are treating them. Brands not normally found at Wal-Mart because the all-in-ones cost a more reasonable $150 instead of the ludicrous $40.
Wait, people still print?
Honestly, I only print stuff when someone insists these days. I haven't owned a printer at home in years; everything I need to reference is sent to a PDF which is then sync'ed to my iPhone. Signatures... digital. I think the last thing I printed was a gift affidavit that I had to get notarized in order to give a car to my ex wife in my divorce :)
On topic though; when are we going to see the printer now with the optional automatic shredder attachment (spam filter)? :)
By Accepting this License Agreement (hereafter referred to as "The Hosejob"), you hereby tell us to print out that add and thereby set up your printer to do such. HP (hereafter referred to as "Corporate Oppressor") is not and will not be consider to be infringing on your rights to your property because you no longer have rights, having willfully and in sound mind signed them over to us. If you disagree with any portion of this EULA, feel free to return this product to your retailer, where they've been instructed not to accept the return due to the fact that the software provided with this printer has had the seal broken on it.
Or, you know, you actually pay thousands of dollars minimum to fight it in court, all the while HP is bleeding you dry through court costs and still continuing to spam your printer.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I can see it now. Your new LCD monitor is sold to you as a 22 inch, but 1/4 of the screen is actually an ad server, so your actual display area is smaller than 22 inches.
This is the new way.
I see it happening on TV. Between the logos, the market ticker, the oil gusher cam, and the pop-up ads promoting upcoming shows, all we're left with on TV is a talking head and all you can see of him/her is an eye or nose jiggling about the screen.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.