Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Isn't it common knowledge? I've known about it for at least two decades...
BTW - you can easily work around it. Get someone else to buy your printer for you, or trade with someone who has the same printer... Now, they will still be able to match it to the printer, if they find it at your home, but other that that, you are free...
PS. Don't use your printer to blackmail FBI or CIA. ;-)
Pro tip: If you use a pen and paper to blackmail the FBI and CIA, they can’t trace it back to you using invisible yellow dots.
There is no connection from a random printer you buy somewhere anonymous to you. They can "only" verify something was (not) printed with that printer.
No you don't get it, if you swap paper with your cousin before printing the feds won't have a fucking clue.
No... But i've thought about how easy it would be to implement in ebooks and pdfs (e.g. my daily newspaper i can download as pdf). I've thought about this when sailing the high seas.
Is it a thing?
Watermarking is definitely a thing. Whistle-blower have to think about that as well.
Most ebooks I bought recently come with a warning that the buyer's data is embedded in the file to deter from sharing it online. TBF it cannot be hard to remove it but I didn't bother to check how it's implemented.
It's prevalent among pdfs downloaded from academic publishers (text listing the receiving IP address and/or institution running down the margins). I wouldn't be surprised if it's also done with hidden white text or in the metadata.
~~Ive never noticed this or heard that printers do that.~~
~~Is this maybe specific to the USA?~~
Edit: TIL, thank you!
It's not specific to USA... They do it everywhere - with color-printers. Don't know if they do it with B/W printers.
They claim it's to track people who try to print money, but if it were, then they wouldn't really do it on laser printers too...
If you print a photo on a regular paper, and then shine an UV-light on it, you can see it. It's mostly small yellow dots.
There is software you can use that adds all the other dot patterns to essentially anonymize your printer.
They use yellow ink for that in colour printers.
I just occured to me that could be the reason for when a color printer wont even let you print, say, pure black text, even though it only has emptied some of the colored ink, but still has plenty of black ink left to do the job...
Did I not write that?
You wrote more, much; but left this to inference.
I highlighted one bit: yellow.
Its called MIC. Or Machine ident. Code , its all around,