Are Your Peripherals Monitoring You? 393
An anonymous reader writes " Engadget is reporting that
'Lexmark, makers of printers and scanners, has been caught monitoring users' printer, scanning, and ink cartridge usage.'" Newsgroup comp.periphs.printers readers noticed the software; the Engadget report says that "Lexmark say they're just tracking printer and cartridge usage, but the registration information and packets being sent say otherwise."
really! (Score:1, Funny)
God I hope not (Score:3, Funny)
That's ok... (Score:5, Funny)
Just as long as my Dvd burner isn't monitoring what I am burning...
Re:Lexmark sucks (Score:5, Funny)
You are an engineer for [evil printer company] and are told to increase profits 50%. So you increase i=20 in the cartrige purge program.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, you monitor your peripherals!
Re:printing ripoff (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ZoneAlarm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not clear? (Score:3, Funny)
That's really only going to work on a counterfeiter dumb enough to have an Internet connection on his currency scan'n'print LAN.
The people they're most likely to catch are the kids that watch National Treasure [imdb.com], and then start scanning $bills and loading the images into a pirated copy of PhotoShop to see if they can find the clues...
Re:printing ripoff (Score:5, Funny)
www.lxkcc1.com aka 192.146.101.142 (Score:3, Funny)
Well then... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know about periperals... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ZoneAlarm (Score:2, Funny)
Or just spoof data (Score:5, Funny)
They'd soon stop trying to spy on the users, if the data was all that everyone keep on printing the same url all the time, something with "goat" in the URL...
Gives a whole new meaning (Score:1, Funny)
Re:As every printer manufacturer... (Score:2, Funny)
2% Ink
5% Cartridge
15% DRM chip
7% ???
70% Profit!!!
Osama bin Scanning (Score:2, Funny)
Their plan to catch Osama was to flood Afghanistan with cheap Lexmark printers and hope that he or one of his buddies buys one. Then wait until Osama or one of his followers prints his digital camera pics on one of those printers. [Assume anyone in Afghanistan who can afford such a printer has Internet access as well] It should not be that hard to match and existing [reference]photo of Osama's face (embedded in that DLL file) with one in a solo or group photo.
It's not that hard to track someone down once you have their IP address.
Don't forget about the $20million reward!
The right way to do this would be to trigger data upload only if match was found, otherwise sit quiet.
OK, that was movie-of-the-week fantasy, but what they could have really done is monitor anyone scaning or printing $20 or $100 dollar bills.
Doesn't Photoshop alert you if you are trying to scan US currency? (or is that another urban legend?)
Re:Didn't the users agree to this monitoring? (Score:2, Funny)
bad idea of a unique EULA for each object
that you own to software.
See http://bunop.com for pencils with EULAs.
That'll fix the guy up above who recommended
using pencil and paper for security...
Re:Not clear? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:As every printer manufacturer... (Score:2, Funny)
5% Cartridge
15% DRM chip
7% ???
+70% Profit!!!
______
99%
+ 1% Evil spying software
______
100%
Re:Not clear? (Score:3, Funny)
Damn straight. There's no way my Lexmark z23 is spying on me, because it doesn't even work in Linux! Yeah! Take that Lexmark... oh, wait...
Re:Another Posible Reason (Score:3, Funny)
Now THAT would be sleazy.