Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print

It's not new, but it's getting noticed: Jordan writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that several printer manufacturers are now and have been for some time embedding (nearly) invisible serial numbers in every document you print with their color laser printers, allowing law enforcement to track any such document back to the printer which printed it. The technology, ostensibly created to track down money counterfeiters, was created by Xerox about 20 years ago. A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'"

Countermeasures?

[fdiv(1,0) (68151)]

Anyone know any methods of getting around this short of physically ripping apart the printer and soldering a few wires together?

Re:Countermeasures?

[Zen (8377)]

Just disconnect the yellow. Who needs all three (or four in some cases) colors anyway?

Re:Countermeasures?

[Phillup (317168)]

One word: Kinkos

Two more words: Pay cash

Re:Countermeasures?

[scribblej (195445)]

Hahah, that'll work.

"Hello Kinko's Employee. I'd like you to print 500 copies of this here One-hundred dollar bill. You can just keep one of them to cover the cost."

Re:Countermeasures?

[mesach (191869)]

I used to work at a Kinkos in Southern California, We would get Regular visits from the SS looking to track down our Security tapes of the Self Serve color copiers, we got so that we could tell when people were doing illegal things and would point out that they were doing illegal things, and when they scoffed at us we would just point up, and they would "Stupidly" look up and give the cameras a good look at thier face so then when the SS would come in they had a good picture of the suspect.

BTW it better be REAL cash, cause people at kinkos (the average employee) has already played around with copying money, and knows what thier copiers can and cannot do and most likely will spot the fake... as I am sure you know, the copiers at kinkos arent in the best maintenance condition and the colors arent calibrated that well.

Re:Countermeasures?

[yorkpaddy (830859)]

I once printed up fake backstage passes at a kinko's. They weren't counterfeit or copied. I designed a logo that looked somewhat like that of a local radio station and put the concert's name on it. The employee said we don't let people print up IDs or counterfeit money, but this is just funny, so he let me. The passes were good enough for me to walk to the backstage area and act like I was supposed to be there. I ended up finding a box full of event staff tags and was able to go whererever I wanted to for the whole concert.

Was I seeing these yellow dots, or others?

[Old Man Kensey (5209)]

Speaking of Kinko's, I worked there for about a year and a half. A lot of the time I'd see yellow dots on color-laser customer originals that was being scanned for enlargement to poster size. I'd always remove them during cleanup, because it was easy if you knew Photoshop. They were really obvious when you blew the image up 450% on the screen to get rid of dust (a dust speck on an 8.5 x 11 will look like a big drop of ink at 36 x 48).

Up till now I've always assumed the dots I saw (usually in empty areas, and always in a regular, widely-spaced square grid pattern) were the scanner picking up the paper tone as a very light yellow and trying to dither to match. But was I actually seeing these anti-counterfeiting dots? And if so, was I committing a felony by removing them? :)

I never noticed our Tektronix color lasers (780/7700) putting them on its output, nor the Xerox DocuColor four-color xerographic copiers (DC12/DC2045/DC6060), although the only ones I really gave the eagle-eye inspection to a lot were the DC output since the Teks were in the customer area and we usually only heard about those when they were out of toner or paper. You could see them on the customer originals if you really looked and turned the paper so the light shone off the toner, but you wouldn't notice them if you weren't looking for them.

And if any of you out there in Kinko-land have a grid chart in your store that gives you enlargement and reduction proportions so you don't have to play with the damned wheel, yeah, I made up that chart.

bad idea

[ArbitraryConstant (763964)]

If I were doing something that I wouldn't want traced back to me, I would assume that any printer would leave unique markings on the paper, on purpose or not. Bullets have rifling marks, tires have unique markings, etc. Those aren't intentional. Also, the paper might be traceable in the same way.

You can bet there's tricks they don't advertise on the discovery channel, particularly the intelligence agencies.

You can't be paranoid enough. :)

Re:Countermeasures?

[cyanman (833646)]

First, this technology has been in use since the very beginning of color laser devices, even before you could use them as a printer. Meaning this started when a color laser printer retailed for close to $100k. It was there (along with other technology) to mark everything that came out of the machine. On the Canon CLC line there is a bar code imbedded on a plate next to the copier glass. Every time you hit the start button, it reads the bar code and compares it to the value stored on the controller board to make sure you had not monkeyed with it, then it prints that bar code all over the page with single yellow pixels. How did they track it? Easy, the thing cost over $75,000. Every one that left the factory was tracked by the manufacturer. They knew where every serial number went. The feds would call up those manufacturers a few times a year asking who a machine with such and such a serial number was sold to. Fast forward to todays commercial equipment and that same thing still applies. I can't vouch for whether you can run down to Best Buy and walk out with a color laser without Best Buy recording the serial number and tying it to your name, but it will dang sure still print identifying info on every page that comes out. It would not suprise me if most of the stuff you drag home marks its territory too, including ink jets. Even if the authorities can't look you up in a database and knock on your door, if they happen to raid your place and grab your printer, try to make new friends in prison.

Re:Countermeasures?

[arose (644256)]

Maybe he just wants to print anonymous, is that a crime nowdays?

Re:Countermeasures?

[arose (644256)]

Political flyers would be the prime example. Also a call to boycot abusive printer producers. :-D

Re:Countermeasures?

[Macgrrl (762836)]

Print the document - then go get multiple copies done at Kinkos, or some other copy centre.

This serves two purposes - firstly you will have two sets of dots overlaid on each other - presumably this will 'confuse' anything trying to read the dots. Secondly, the dominate signature will be the public access device - if the dots are hard to see by the naked eye, they will be very difficult to copy.

For the tracking to work they need to match a serial number to a user - i.e. the device has to be registered. For small consumer devices (e.g. the HP CLJ 2500) it is simple for the user to simply not register the purchase with the manufacturer, however these sort of devices are unlikely to be capable of producing anything which could be remotely be considered a good forgery.

Large colour devices often come with maintenance contracts attached, so if you knew the serial number and had a cooperative manufacturer, tracking the owner would probably be relatively simple, however you would also find that these devices are typically in a shared user environment (offices, copy centres, student resource centres, etc...).

Having said that, I work for Xerox and conduct audits for large corporate clients regarding what equipment they have and how it's used - even with access to the sales records, client asset registers and physical identifcation of units we frequently have problems identifying every device on a site back to original point of sale. Errors in how SN's have been entered into billing systems or asset registers is not uncommon, chassis or logic boards get changed during maintenance changing the actual or apparent SNs (very common with HP or Lexmark equipment). This would only work with seriously large hardware with fully tracked service histories.

Re:Countermeasures?

[AstroDrabb (534369)]

Are you serious? Being able to express free speech in an anonymous way is the most important part of free speak. For example, while I am pro-life, there are many pro-choice people who may want to voice their opinions anonymously because there are many pro-life freaks (not me) out there. Also think in a political way. There are people who may want to speak out against the current government or a even worse, a local government and do not want to suffer any repercussions.

Many of the people who spoke out and signed the original Declaration of Independence were wealthy, and lost everything after they signed! Freedom of speech doesn't always come with no price tag. Sometimes people pay dearly for expressing their opinions, even in the "Land of the Free".

I am a Conservative Christian Libertarian (I know it sounds messed up). The sad thing is that there are many in our nation that have no problems with _more_ government control. These "conservatives" offer excuses like if you have nothing to hide, then why would you care? _I_ personally care because A) I have nothing to hide and B) if I did have something to hide it is none of your @##$@# business! Our government was never set up to be "big brother". Sadly we are almost there. Many of my fellow Christians are more then willing to give up their rights/liberties because they _think_ it will make them more "safe". They think that only "bad" people would want privacy and not want "big brother" to know your every move.

I am sorry but I will not give up my rights, liberty or privacy to make it easier for the government to catch a "bad" guy. As a "good" citizen, I am willing to help the government, police (I give them money every year), etc to stop crime, but my help stops when they try to encroach my rights. Yes, being able to print on a stinking piece of paper without the government tracking me is what I consider a right.

Re:Countermeasures?

[keraneuology (760918)]

I'm curious to know how you arrived at a universal human right of anonymity

Please refer to:

TALLEY v. CALIFORNIA, 362 U.S. 60 (1960) [findlaw.com]

McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n (93-986), 514 U.S. 334 (1995) [cornell.edu]

Very relevant is the quote from McIntyre:

"The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. ... Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation -- and their ideas from suppression -- at the hand of an intolerant society."

While one can reasonably question anonymity as a "universal" right applicable in all times under all conditions, these times should be the exception rather than the rule with the burden falling on those who say that the restriction should apply rather than on those who say not.

Re:Countermeasures?

[mgv (198488)]

my suggestion? find another same model printer that does this, then DUPLICATE PRECISELY these yellow dots in your final image... two sets, should--- well, supply reasonable doubt at least...


Thinking about it, adding in a speckled yellow pattern as part of your printing algorithm would work - it would just take a little knowledge of what they print.

Does anyone know if the pattern gets printed even on white space? Printing a "blank" page should reveal the pattern and allow a suitable overlay that would stuff up the recognition algorithms.

Michael

You will never know.

[twitter (104583)]

Thinking about it, adding in a speckled yellow pattern as part of your printing algorithm would work - it would just take a little knowledge of what they print.

That knowledge would take lots of study to learn and you could never be sure. Printers with enough sophistication to detect currency and refuse to print can pull lots of tricks on you if it detects pattern prints and other investigations. A blank page needs no identification marks at all and the printer may refuse to print any. Subtle variation in letter spacing or shape can have the same effect. Do you know exactly where each pixel in each character you print are supposed to go? Missing pixels can encode a serial number as well as those that are not supposed to be there.

Re:Countermeasures?

[mikael (484)]

Consider the number of bits required to store a serial number.

Assuming 8 digits of hexadecimal, that would give you 32 bits. So a little box 6 x 6 pixels would be enough. A laser printer has resolutions ranging from 600 to 2400 dpi. So you would need far less than one square millimetre to store such information. Even if you double the size of the box in order to have some sort of redundancy, that would still be far less than 1 square millimetre.

Re:Countermeasures?

[kesuki (321456)]

Printers are cheap, every time you run out of ink, place old printer inside ion cannon* and turn it into a ball of molten obsidian.. and also never send in warrenty registration etc etc... and even though they can trace documents to a certain printer, since said printer is no longer identifiable.

*= if you don't Own an ion cannon yet, you can build one care of these DIY directions [slashdot.org] (a cyclotron is the key component to an ion cannon...)

Re:Countermeasures?

[Tackhead (54550)]

> I suspect that if this technology has actually been around for 20 years, it has gotten good enough to be nearly impossible to bypass.

This technology has been around a lot more than 20 years.

In Soviet Romania [google.com], a sample page from every typewriter had to be registered with the police, so that any samizdat produced could be quickly traced back to the typewriter's owner. Use your imagination as to what happened to the owner, or Google for it.

In Romania every typewriter had to be registered with a local magistrate. Samples of letters typed on these machines had to be produced under the observation of the secret police so they could trace underground publishing activity.

- G. Davey, Christian Publishing: Before and After the Communist Collapse

In Soviet Russia [geocities.com], all photocopiers were registered with the KGB and kept in secure rooms, to which physical access was restricted.

Some samizdat works, mostly magazines, were typed on typewriter. The copies were indistinct and hard to read. I realized that the movement against violating human rights was doomed to be an eternal amusement of the few intellectuals without proper copyprinters. But where could one find a copyprinting machine in the country, where all the copiers were affixed with seals at night and placed in the special rooms where only proved KGB members could work on it. There was the only decision - to make the machine ourselves. It had to be easy to make and quite efficient.

- A. A. Bolonkin, Memoirs of Soviet Political Prisoner

The West is probably still playing catch-up.

Re:Countermeasures?

[RWerp (798951)]

To add more spice to it, in Poland even for legitimate (in state's eyes) use of xerox machine one had to obtain a special permission.

Comparisons of laser printers' chips with Soviet Russia are, however, exaggerating. There are probably lots of possibilities to distinguish two copies printed by two laser machines. While giving the state the possibility not just to compare the output of two known laser printers (which I'm sure comes very handy when tracking false money, extortions or some con-man tricks) but to find the printer which printed any possible text is surely disturbing, there is no comparison with Soviet-style secret police. Soviets didn't have to bother with chips, they had people spying on other people, on their neighbours and spouses --- it always works better than technology. The best defence before Soviet-style supervision is assuring your country isn't run by such kind of people.

Re:Countermeasures?

[nolife (233813)]

I suspect that if this technology has actually been around for 20 years, it has gotten good enough to be nearly impossible to bypass.

Good enough? I doubt it. This is one time where security through obscurity worked. Considering there is not a live market and a real desire to remove these codes, it has not passed the test of many hands. A bunch of hackers can work collectively to get around an Xbox and a Playstation because there is the incentive of more functionality and thrill of experimentation that you can share with others. Printing money is not something there is a big following for and not something you advertise that you are interested in. I would assume many big time money printers people have got around this serial number issue but it can still be used to catch the other 99% that thgouht they knew what they were doing.

I was right!

[Kenja (541830)]

This is why I always print my ransom letters using an old daisy wheel printer.

Re:I was right!

[DanteBlack (656808)]

Of course a daisy wheel printer can be tracked forensicly anyway since they suffer the same "signature" issues that a typewriter does. Hammer based printers, manual and electric typewriters, leave distinct, identifiable, characteristics in the copy that they produce. For example, wear on the hammer, a tendancy to "drop" a letter etc.

Re:I was right!

[Drakonite (523948)]

You overlooked a vital problem in your plan.. The prints created by a daisy wheel are as unique to the printer used as fingerprints to a person, if not more so.

Re:I was right!

[lawpoop (604919)]

Yes, but the feds can't go the the daisey wheel printer manufacturer and say "which printer of yours makes this unique pattern?", whereas with the vendor embedded watermarks, they can.

Well, they can still ask the daisey wheel vendor, but they will get an "I don't know" answer.

Re:I was right!

[Epistax (544591)]

My soldering iron says that fingerprints might be unique, but they aren't permanent.

Re: Gold-backed currency

[flimflam (21332)]

Note, the USD isnt real, its been fake since 1913 when federal reserve was setup privately, its just paper only worth the trust of the govt in getting income taxes to pay for it.

Um, I hate to tell you this, but while the US$ may not be "real" in the sense that it directly represents an actual commodity, there is no less trust involved in a gold-backed currency. First of all, how do you actually verify that the apparently gold-backed dollars in your wallet are actually backed by gold? You'd have to turn them in and trust that you'd actually get some amount of gold in exchange. And how do you know that the gold you own is actually worth something? While gold is actually useful, it certainly doesn't have enough intrinsic value to justify its market price. It's value is primarily derived from the speculation of others like you who trust that it will have some enduring value and is therefor a safe investment.

An interesting story: a friend and co-worker of mine is from Bosnia, and lived with his family in Sarajevo during the war. His mother had saved her gold and jewels believing that they would help them during (or after) the siege. Before the end, however, she ended up trading most of them (they'd be worth a couple thousand dollars, now) for a dozen eggs. It just goes to show the extent to which the relative value of anything can change based on the current situation.

Just another reason...

[MrDyrden (833392)]

To be lazy and NOT send in your product registration card!

I mean, seriously. How else would they know who bought it and how to get a name from that serial number? I guess maybe if the store kept your credit card info on file or something and associated it with the serial number, but how often would that happen?

Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!

Re:Just another reason...

[6Yankee (597075)]

Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!

But not cash that you printed yourself on a printer that wasn't paid for with cash you didn't print yourself. Or something.

Re:Just another reason...

[bunyip (17018)]

To be lazy and NOT send in your product registration card!

I mean, seriously. How else would they know who bought it and how to get a name from that serial number? I guess maybe if the store kept your credit card info on file or something and associated it with the serial number, but how often would that happen?

Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!



Actually, if you're going to do anything illegal, cash is king. Just print some up and, well, ....

Anyway, police officer friend of mine once who said that if you're going to do something illegal, do it big, do it once and don't tell anybody.

That "once" part of it is key, you could print up a bunch of cash one afternoon, enough to pay for the next printer (with cash, of course), then dispose of the printer.

Greed will get you in the end.

Alan.

Re:Just another reason...

[Cylix (55374)]

Sweet...

Now I just have to buy a printer at a yard sale and commit some heinous crime with it.

Later on...

"Yep, looks like he was murdered with this printer, but don't worry we will track it right back to the owner."

Although...

[by Anonymous Coward]

"A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'"

Although I hear not buying a Xerox printer will.

Engadget

[Linuxthess (529239)]

Well I'm glad someone else here is reading Engadget [engadget.com] and followed the subsequent link to the PC World [pcworld.com] article [pcworld.com].

CSI

[The_Rippa (181699)]

And as we all know very well, CSI has a machine that will read the code and bring up a 3d map with your current location, a recent photo of you, and a list of every cash purchase you've made in the last six months.

Re:CSI

[chill (34294)]

You are confusing CSI with WalMart. You also forgot the computer that tracks every RFID-tagged item you ever bought from there or Sam's Club.

Wait a minute...I think the last box of tin foil I bought was from WalMart! That means it probably has an RFID tag...

IS NOTHING SACRED?!

=Charles

In the old Soviet Union

[pherris (314792)]

The early photocopiers in the USSR had a state issued serial number eched on the glass so copies could tracked to that machine and possible the user(s). And the tracking wasn't about counterfeiting either.

It seems they were ahead of the US by 30+ years. Another sign of a dying empire.

Re:In the old Soviet Union

[mdielmann (514750)]

No.

The USSR was doing this 30+ years ago. They collapsed 13 years ago (1991). Total span of 17+ years.

The U.S started doing this 20 years ago. We only found out now. So, by the USSR model, it should be collapsing anytime now. Now take a look around and ask yourself, "Is this the America I grew up reading about?"

odd

[name773 (696972)]

The technology... was created by Xerox about 20 years ago.
It was 1984 twenty years ago.

We can turn this to our advantage...

[LegendOfLink (574790)]

...by printing tons of encoded, "dots", so when police read them, they will read, "All Your Base Are Belong to Us!"

The Geek revolution has begun.

They never learn. . .

[physicsphairy (720718)]

A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'

So use substandard mischief. :p

I'm quite serious really. Unless the serial number is tiled, just print a full border and keep whatever stuff you want to cut out away from the serial.

If it is tiled, you have a number of options. You could script a program to 'split' the image so that you print unmarked bands in multiple runthroughs which eventually add up to a full image. You could offset some unknown amount and then surround the serial number with other sequences to disguise the actual serial (would take some knowledge of how serials are assigned to do a good diguise). Both of those would require a little hardware modification. But if you're printing $100 bills. . . .

Anyway, those are just some ideas off the top of my head. The point is that if people know what they're up against, they can find a workaround. Ideally, these kinds of tricks would be kept secret. In the case, the point is trip up ignorant cons who don't account for something they don't realize exists.

Oh well. This will still nail the 16 year old delingquents who decide to pull a fast one on the clerk at their local grocery store.

Back to the old methods

[MagicDude (727944)]

Well, looks like it's back to cutting out newspaper headlines to make my blackmail notes.

Old News

[JWSmythe (446288)]

This is old news.

There have been news stories about serial numbers being embedded in printing for years. The first I read of it, at least 7 or 8 years ago was the same yellow microprint from color inkjet printers, which was mandated by the U.S. Gov't, to prevent counterfit bills from being printed.

All I've ever done myself is scan in bills at the highest resolution, to show people the microprint (note the double lines around the portrait, one is really text).

It actually doesn't stop anything, people still print them. I remember back in high school there was a story in the local paper about some kids getting dragged away by the Secret Service for photocopying $1 bills and putting them in soda machines. They only had to do one side, and it didn't care about the color, so easy drinks. Our school had a better 'hack'. If you took a water pistol and sprayed water into the bill slot, it'd short out the electronics of it, and you could push buttons all day to get free drinks. I saw it done a few times. :)

But hey, just assume that anything you print is being tracked. Chances are pretty good that nothing you print is going to be all that interesting.

Extremely paranoid? Pay cash for your printer, and get someone else to actually purchase it. Or don't leave home, because 'they' may be watching. Ha!

I hate to break your party

[the_unknown_soldier (675161)]

I hate to break your "They can't stop me i pay cash" party, but i think the idea of these serial numbers is so that if the police suspect someone and have evidence to get a warrant tehy can use printer data to secure a conviction.

Funny

[hawkbug (94280)]

This is hilarious for several reasons.

1) I never register a printer with the manufacturer after I purchase it. I also don't know anybody else who did either. It's a waste of time and an invasion of privacy.

2) Let's say a printer was never registered - and it was paid for with cash at a store like Best Buy. Good luck tracking down the buyer.

3) Even if both the above were not true and the manfucturer knew who originally bought it, one word foils their plans: Ebay. If you buy a printer on ebay, who knows how many hands it's been through before yours. While it is still possible to track it after a sale on ebay, it just got a whole hell of a lot harder.

PROM???

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

a chip located "way in the machine, right near the laser" that embeds the dots when the document "is about 20 billionths of a second" from printing.

What are the chances that this is in PROM that is burned internally once the serial number is assigned? If so, overwrite it with a new code, perhaps through an undocumented command to the printer controller. After all, you don't think each of these chips is uniquely made, or that they don't have to do something like this to keep them all properly matched to the corresponding external serial numbers.

Or is it RAM, loaded by the firmware on each power-up? Then change your internal printer serial number. Those things are set during manufacture somehow.

Or look up Xerox's patent on the process.

Or swap your yellow, cyan, and magenta toners around, and make the corrections in Photoshop to get the desired image with the transposed colors. They'll be looking for the wrong color dots.

Or add lots of dots of your own.

Ever notice that this isn't the only anti-counterfeiting technology that likes to use yellow. Why is that?

There is a question remaining...

[laughingcoyote (762272)]

I have seen several arguments here that this is a perfectly harmless technology, and some of those arguments have been logical and valid. However, it still begs one question: If it is such a useful, valuable technology, why are the manufacturers not informing the customers of this "feature" in their instruction manuals or on their packaging? I checked the websites of Canon, HP, and Xerox, including the specifications of several laser printers. In none of the feature or specification listings is it said "Prints unique serial number to easily identify printer of every document!"

If this technology is so useful, wonderful, and defensible, please feel free to inform those who pay money for your products. They might have a different view to give you. There are legitimate reasons to remain anonymous. (Even if that's just that you want to.) A desire for anonymity doesn't mean that you're doing something illegal, and that mindset is extremely dangerous, getting into the "Well if you don't want cameras in your living room, what do you have to hide?" territory.

Discovering the Number

[buckhead_buddy (186384)]

I used to work at a check printing company. My gut feeling is that this smacks of a manipulative urban legend rather than a real technology.

Yes, I'm sure that it is feasible with today's technology, but the expense of doing this on all color printers in the low profit margin color printer market makes me dubious. It will take a law to get all the suppliers to comply and create an "even-playing field" of expense for everyone. The patriotism Xerox demostrates may be commendable that their products are more trackable but it isn't profitable.

Looking at the problems with the coordination of the ISBN book publishing numbers or the social security numbers makes coordiantion of a secret serial number system that's shared between international suppliers even more absurd. "Oops, we accidentally re-used the secret id numbers for the Xerox printers with these knock-off Zerox printers for Tiger Direct."

Finding the serial number is a good first step. Refill an empty toner cartridge with black toner. This will not tell you the serial number (you'll have to do comparisons between printers of the same model to get that), but the presence of the serial number should be easier to find. If it's not there with the black toner then it's either a more subtle technology (modulating the laser itself?) or it's not going to be found.

The great thing about color laser is its comparative cheapness. Dye Sublimation printers were what the check people would use for very impressive mock-ups, but the dye refills were very, very expensive compared to the laser printer refills. Still, when someone in the art department wanted to make a fake United Federation of Planets Passport, they'd go for the dye sub printer when the boss wasn't looking.

Print the same blank sheet thru lost of printers?

[Tangential (266113)]

I wonder if running the same sheet of paper, printed as a blank page, thru 10-20 printers if it would garble this registration info to the point of uselessness?

Re:Those rat b---

[Kenja (541830)]

"That just has to break some kind of privacy law"

What makes you think we still have such archaic things as privacy laws anymore? Dont you know that if you have a private life the terrorists win?

Re:Those rat b---

[Kohath (38547)]

Here's a worse one:

Did you know that every time you touch something, you leave an invisible mark that's unique to you and can be used to track where you've been?

It's a privacy nightmare.