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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.
No, faxes come through a series of wires. These ads come through a series of tubes. Completely different!
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.
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.
You can easily disable this feature. It's opt-in. Disable it by not opting in. See? Wasn't that easy?
Seriously, is the article that complicated? you have to log into Yahoo's page, ask for content, and the content will be delivered as you ask for it, and Yahoo! will add an advert so they can justify setting up the system that automatically delivers the articles to you.
Personally, I think the idea is asinine - I prefer my articles on-screen and I hate the idea of printing out everything I want to read on paper.
But no one will be sneaking into your house and making your printer print anything you don't ask for.
Yet.
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