Laser Printers Let Authorities Track You
by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 18th 2008 at 8:31AM
It was bad enough when we found out these office workhorses were just giving you cancer, now they could be endangering your whole nefarious operation. Bad guys take heed, your laser printer might give you away. Turns out that many laser printers mark every page they print with yellow dots that are invisible to the naked eye. A company can actually use those dots to identify the serial number of the printer and you by association.The dots were a reaction to government fears that high quality laser printers would lead to an outbreak of counterfeiting. However, privacy advocates, like those at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), fear the identifying information might be used against political dissidents, whistle blowers, and printers of materials governments may want to track.
Most personal printers in circulation are ink jet printers and don't have the same identifying marks, but as prices have dropped laser printers have made their way into more and more homes. So next time you're going to print out sheets of Canadian dollars (American currency is no longer worth the paper it's printed on) you might want to avoid that speedy laser printer in the corner. [Source: USA Today]
