EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!

Did you know that your colour laser printer is secretly printing a forensic code on every one of your printouts so the government can track it?
Sounds like a nutjob conspiracy theory, but it's true!
Yellow dots that are invisible to the naked eye are printed all over your page that have the printer serial number and time and date encoded within them.
List of printers that do/don't have this forensic encoding
It may even violate human rights:

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[TechnocraticBushman]

These things are just creepy. I live in Romania. My mother used to write for the western media (covertly). Back then in the 1980s, during communism, owning a typewriter was almost a crime. You had to register it, get it "fingerprinted" (each letter on each typewriter has it's quirks) so they can track you down in case you've typed something against the system. Now as properly trained westerners, nobody will dispute me on how bad Stalinist Communism was. In fact, I might get a few reflexive up-votes. But if I were to say privacy is important, there is the pseudo-skeptic "please fuck me plenty" type of person who will say I am a conspiracy theorist, a quack, that if you're honest, then you have nothing to hide (like the Google CEO asshole). To which I can reply "please post your email address and your password publicly so we can all read your private stuff". Privacy is an important principle and the lack thereof will make people more obedient and less likely to speak their minds when it matters. Nobody is interested in the pictures you took of your naughty bits. But doesn't it bother you that they are stored somewhere on a server without your consent(if you sync your phone to Google or Apple)? Does it not bother you that a private government contractor has the ability to look at them at will? And lest you think _this can't happen to us, we're a democracy" bla bla bla, guess what? It already did. There is more wiretapping, more spying, more propaganda and far more effective today then it was back in Stalinist Russia.

[jlebrech]

that's why i still write my random notes using newspaper cutouts.

[laurensweyn]

So THAT's why my printer refuses to let me print a black and white page without replacing the color first!

[FranLab]

Definitely redefines the claims of photographic quality in color prints, since those artifacts are there no matter how you set it up or what you print. A real eye opener Dave!

[jamesgrimwood]

do a video on why you can't scan money using colour scanners. And how Photoshop will refuse to open images of money. It's quite interesting.

[redtails]

What a waste of toner. Billions of pages are being printed each day, literally tonnes and tonnes of yellow toner down the drain.

[GadgetAddict]

The thing is, do retailers actually track which serial numbered printer went to which person? I could buy one at the mall tomorrow and no one would know I own it. Or just buy used. I guess microdots only work if they catch you with the printer.

[DaveCurran]

I'll have to go back to using my old manual typewriter with the misaligned letter t. They'll never be able to trace

[MushFarmer]

It is like Uncle Sam pissed on all your documents

[Cornholio]

more tinfoil hat related content please

[electronicsNmore]

Great video! Now that I think about it, I have seen these dots before. We were all warned about this spying decades ago. This video will get lots of views! :-) The next step is to learn how to turn off the pattern, even better, don't send in the warranty card and pay cash for the printer.

[GothAlice]

The question I have: has a single crime ever been solved using these traces? If not, why in the name of all that is holy am I paying extra (in ink costs) to print yellow dots that are useless?

[RinoaL]

well thanks for feeding my paranoia.... :P

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

So, looks like some conspiracy theories are actually true. Being paranoid sometimes has its advantages.

[deanintheg]

so this is why my yellow ink is always running out prematurely

[Subparanon]

It looks like a gentlemens agreement so as to prevent regulation of digital media devices. If they didn't do this, the manufacturers were concerned their products would be banned as counterfeiting tools or laws would be passed regulating their sale.

Here is a fun experiment, try scanning a $5 or higher denomination bill on a digital scanner and then open it up in Adobe Photoshop or most other digital editing programs. They will flat out tell you they can't display the image. That's right, you can't even take really good pictures of money because the software checks what your image looks like and if it looks like money it won't work.

[DavidSprings]

This is why I like my 10 year old Samsung CLP. Unfortunately, it doesn't feed as well as it used to, so all my bills are slightly off center.

[bashkillszombies]

Explains why yellow runs out even though I have never ever ever printed in colour before.

[shid]

Throw away all yellow toner cartridges!!!!:D

[adslfytiquhf]

I vaguely remember the EFF campaigning against this encoding when it was first proposed. Looks like they didn't win.