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Why printers add secret tracking dots (2020)
- taylorfinley 5y agoThere's a tool to obfuscate your printer's unique code, found here: https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda
- hanniabu 5y agoIf I'm doing anything that requires this type of tool, I wouldn't want to just obfuscate the code, I'd want it completely removed it altered.
- egypturnash 5y agoI wonder if changing the background of your printout to 100% yellow would defeat this. The BBC article insinuates there are other schemes that are lesser-known than the dots, though.
- in_a_society 5y agoOr letting your printer run out of yellow ink.
- alexanderdmitri 5y agoWhen I had a color printer it would refuse to print if any of the five cartridges started to run low. The cartridges were very expensive too.
- thioordc 5y agoAll modern printers do this. Most annoying thing ever!
- estaseuropano 5y agoMost people are served best by a B/W laser printer. Never dries out and runs forever. Then for special stuff print at work/order/go to printshop. I currently have a color laser which also works fine and is cheap but is just far too big (Oki MC625)
- alexanderdmitri 5y agoAgreed on the B/W laser printer suggestion, The Giver is just HP propaganda. I ditched their color printer after a few months and bought a Cannon B/W printer[0] for ~$75. It's been a few years now and while I don't print enormous amounts, I regularly do need to print out forms or documents. I still haven't used up the original ink cartridge it came with. There's also a Linux driver provided by the company for this model. [0]: https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/printers/black-and-white-laser/imageclass-mf232w https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...
- danieldk 5y agoThere's also a Linux driver provided by the company for this model. Are Linux drivers still a thing? Both our current and previous printers could be used without setting up any drivers through AirPrint. The new printer also scans without any drivers through AirPrint. I'd assume that Linux can also print driverless through AirPrint?
- TingPing 5y agoDrivers still exist but you can and should avoid them: https://openprinting.github.io/driverless/ https://openprinting.github.io/driverless/
- thioordc 5y agoThank you so much! I really like the look of it and a nearby store has one. Picking it up tomorrow!
- 5y ago
- dzhiurgis 5y agoIMO you generally want to send the authorities as much wrong path as possible. But then once they realise they are being fooled thats a datapoint in itself. And who knows, maybe tools like that print microcode inside the microcode. If it does I hope it’s not the full text of gpl licence.
- rasz 5y agoWhat you want is a printer bought at goodwill/recycling center with cash or from hamfest free trash pile. Those dots made sense when printers were $500-1000 in ~1995.
- ant6n 5y agoI wonder whether it would be possible to just build your own printer. That is, rip out the electronics from some common model and replace with an Arduino that just sends the correct signals to the hardware to print.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tehwebguy 5y agoAs if printer companies weren’t already some of the worst offenders of consumer trust
- hinoki 5y agoI think in this instance the owner of the printer, the NSA, is very happy with this feature.
- ivolimmen 5y agoWhen my last printer died I switched to the Ecotank series from Epson. It's a good printer and it has a better business model; you own the printer and you do not have to buy expensive ink from Epson as you already bought the printer (not like all the other printers out there)
- mindcrime 5y agoSome previous HN posts with related discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21330718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21330718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14509249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14509249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505444
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoThanks! Here are the ones I found that have comments, plus a few others: Why printers add secret tracking dots (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26526035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26526035 - March 2021 (3 comments) DEDA – Tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation Toolkit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392977 - June 2018 (7 comments) Why printers add secret tracking dots - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505444 - June 2017 (100 comments) Printer Tracking Dots Back in the News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14504833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14504833 - June 2017 (1 comment) List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894 - June 2017 (210 comments) Secret Dots from Printer Outed NSA Leaker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818 - June 2017 (211 comments) Printer dots raise privacy concerns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245963 - July 2008 (13 comments)
- qwertox 5y agoThank you for putting the title and date in there.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- spoonjim 5y agoThe NSA did not need these dots to track Reality Winner. Even a ordinarily secured corporate environment will record an audit log of anything written to outputs, on the service side (so the print server will effectively print a second copy to disk with all information about who printed it, mail server will record all outgoing messages even if deleted from user’s Sent folder, etc).
- hoppyhoppy2 5y agoYup, the FBI arrest affidavit didn't mention the dots. There could have been some parallel construction to avoid testifying about secret printer dots in court, but on the face of it it appears that the government found out who it was in more conventional ways: >The U.S. Government Agency conducted an internal audit to determine who accessed the intelligence reporting since its publication. The U.S. Government Agency determined that six individuals printed this reporting. WINNER was one of these six individuals. A further audit of the six individuals' desk computers revealed that WINNER had e-mail contact with the News Outlet. The audit did not reveal that any of the other individuals had e-mail contact with the News Outlet. >On June 3, 2017, your affiant spoke to WINNER at her home in Augusta, Georgia. During that conversation, WINNER admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue [...] WINNER further admitted removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it [...] WINNER further acknowledged that she was aware of the contents of the intelligence reporting and that she knew the contents of the reporting could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation. https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/971331/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/971331/downlo...
- mark-r 5y agoI've known about the yellow dot patterns on color printers for a long time. If you've ever wondered why the yellow ink on your printer goes down faster than you think it should, now you know. But this article seems to imply that the yellow dots also occur on black-and-white printers. How is that possible?
- programmarchy 5y agoSo removing the yellow cartridge thwarts dot tracking?
- stephen_g 5y agoA lot of printers will just refuse to work without one of the cartridges fitted... Hell, some refuse to print even if one does still have some have ink in it but the printer thinks it should have run out at the time...
- 14 5y agoGuess an answer would be inject some black or some type of bright ink into the yellow cartridge so the dots show up easily then hole punch those spots out.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- notjulianjaynes 5y agoThen to reverse it, just put the page on top of a piece of yellow construction paper!
- 14 5y agoWell you would need the whole punch big enough that the exact location of a dot would be obscured. Like, every hole would be not perfectly centred over a dot. If it was centred you could essentially establish what the dot location was prior to cutting and give away what you are trying to not do. So what you suggest would show an approximate location of a dot but not reveal the details.
- daenz 5y agoI've always wondered if jpeg encoders added something like this to screenshots. Should be possible to add a compression-resilient pattern that encodes the screenshotter's host details.
- 13of40 5y agoI'm not sure about jpeg, but with an algorithm like 'deflate' the encoder is constantly making decisions about whether it's more efficient to represent a series of bytes as a literal or as a reference to a previous series. I think a steganographer could take advantage of that by encoding something like a tracking number in the form of the occasional less efficient decision.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- magnat 5y agoBlizzard watermarks screenshots produced by World of Warcraft find and track users of emulated servers by embedding user account info and server IP all across the image. https://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-warcraft-general/375573-looking-inside-your-screenshots.html https://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-...
- npteljes 5y agoFascinating stuff. I didn't think my trust in software could be broken any more, yet here I am.
- beebeepka 5y agoI assume you are aware modern games are tracking everything players do. The have heatmaps and everything. It's been going on for quite a while
- infogulch 5y agoI'm much less bothered by the idea of developers having access to things like aggregated anonymous heat maps, and more worried by the amount of individual details required to generate such a heat map.
- downandout 5y agoA more foolproof way to track this would be to slightly change the wording of important sections in each copy handed out. This would allow them to track down even copies of confidential documents that were simply transcribed or where the press used excerpts.
- pjerem 5y agoThose documents may probably have legal value, and could be legitimately handled by dozens or hundreds of people. And we are talking about millions of pages. That could only work with an intentional trap when you know someone leaks but not who.
- Aachen 5y agoWith five variations of ten sentences ("We now have", "Now we have", "Right now we have", etc., you can probably come up with this many in under five minutes), one combination randomly assigned to a user accessing the document, you get 5^10=9.8M variations. That should narrow it down. Not that I necessarily think doing this is a good thing, for the record.
- lettergram 5y agoI noticed all the recent printers from HP required a setup which... - Required me to install an app - Required me to enable gps on my device (and allow app to access) - Printer phoned home after / during setup (as did the app) They really don’t need the dots any more when they know the gps coordinates and have the ability to send anything they want to and from the device. I personally spoofed the gps, ran a vpn and blocked the device from phoning home (after setup). Had me saying “what the f**!?” a couple of times.
- NavinF 5y agoI assume you're talking about WiFi setup? Ethernet to your switch or USB to a RPi should be a lot more reliable and works without an app. Then again, I haven't set up a printer in a decade.
- JoshTriplett 5y agoI just recently set up one of those printers. They have a lot of dark patterns trying to steer you towards the app (and the "instant ink" junk), but it was still possible to skip over that and do all the setup on the printer itself, at which point it became a normal discoverable network printer.
- MaxBarraclough 5y agoDo you have the option of using Free and Open Source drivers?
- lsiq 5y agoI stopped buying HP printers a decade ago when I found tons of HP spyware when doing some system cleaning.
- unixhero 5y agoJust use a Unix based OS like OSX and Linux. No spyware / adware drivers needed. Solved
- squarefoot 5y ago
- cable2600 5y agoWhen did this start? Maybe you can buy an old printer that does not do it and get a USB adapter for it? The early HP Laserjets were fine.
- RuggedPineapple 5y agoIm not sure when it started, but I do know back in the early 90's copiers and printers were already currency aware. The copier in my elementary school wouldn't copy a dollar bill at anything close to full size, had to be at least either 75%/125%
- londons_explore 5y agoWhich raises the question... Could you copy it at 125% and then copy that copy at ~75% to end up back at the scale you started...?
- bbojan 5y agoYou sir are a hacker at heart!
- anothernewdude 5y agoNo, because you'd end up with 93.75%. You need to scale 80% to reverse 125%
- willis936 5y agoWouldn't the detection algorithm just check for "am I being asked to print currency at the correct 100% scale?"?
- sumedh 5y agoCanon copiers and printers in early 2000 could scan and print Indian Rupees, dont ask me how I know that. I assume the note needs to have the euro constellation, if its not there the copier/printer would work normally.
- nwallin 5y ago
- chupachup 5y agoI remember finding out about printer tracking dots while checking if there is any way police could find me for mildly vandalising a neighbor's business sign.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoIf printers can do this, then why wasn't it done with ballots? It would make auditing possible to have each paper ballot a unique id.
- sircastor 5y agoBallots are tricky. In the US, You want to ensure anonymity while also ensuring the voters franchise is not threatened. If we want them to be uniquely identifiable, then we don’t need to hide the identifier. If we don’t want them to be uniquely identifiable, then hiding the identifiable ID becomes a violation of the voters privacy.
- beebeepka 5y agoI thought the US has something called voting registration and it's public. How does that ensure anonymity?
- cr1895 5y agoVoter registration is not linked to how one votes.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y agoYou can register as a Democrat and participate in the primaries for the Democratic candidate but (thanks to the secret ballot) vote for Republicans in the final election. Or vice-versa. And nobody other than you will ever know how you (as an individual) actually voted. Or you can register as an independent if you prefer. The rules vary by state, but the worst that happens is you can't participate in the primaries (but can absolutely vote in the final election). Who you, as an individual, voted for is still not traceable back to you. In other words, it's your right, thanks to the secret ballot, to vote completely differently from the party you registered under or even differently from how everyone in your life perceives you, and nobody will ever know. There are people who changed their mind years ago about what party they support and have been voting that way ever since, but just haven't gotten around to (or don't care enough to) update the party they listed on their voter registration.
- anothernewdude 5y agoI've never once been able to detect these dots on any scanned document.
- throwaway81523 5y agoI believe these dots are only printed by color printers, ostensibly to help catch currency counterfeiters. So the simplest countermeasure is use monochrome printers for daily stuff and for anything sensitive. I guess sometimes you'll NEED color, but very often you can probably do without it.
- yosito 5y agoI suspect smartphone cameras may add a similar type of tracking mark to photos taken with the phone. I assume the NSA would be able to determine which phone a photo came from based on something like this. I don't have anything more than rumors, but if anyone has a link about this, it would be interesting!
- clusterfish 5y agoDon't even need a special mark, the sensor's physical uniqueness is enough: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/13/16771854/researchers-study-smartphone-photo-id-analysis https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/13/16771854/researchers-stu...
- smorgusofborg 5y agoThat's interesting but more like having the ballistics than directly getting a serial number to ask the supply chain about.
- m3at 5y agoNon-serious for a topic that very much is, but this "fuck you, low on cyan" meme makes a lot of sense now: https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/d2bwot/printers/ https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/d2bwot/printers/
- _moof 5y agoCMYK processes can also do “rich” black, which uses some or all of the other inks in addition to black. The result is darker than black ink alone.
- gmueckl 5y agoIt's just that this stops being funny when the printer firmware is is hell bent on keeping the printer offline until all the cartridges are back over minimum levels. I own an older Lexmark printer that still works like a charm. But it shuts down completely if it runs low on any color. This is especially aggravating if you need to print s single page urgently and you don't have a cartridge in reserve.
- arrakeen 5y agojust to keep the non-serious stuff together, this topic always reminds me of this tweet: https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1116670170980859905 https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1116670170980859905
- oldgradstudent 5y agoReminds me of the scene in The Life of Others (2006) where the Stasi has samples from every registered typewriter in East Germany, so they have to smuggle a special typewriter.
- turingcomplet 5y agoI learned about this from watching the documentary [1971](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_(2014_film)).
- bullen 5y agoTip: Buy an AxiDraw instead, their boards and drivers are open-source and you pick the pen! :D
- tgvaughan 5y agoFirst skimmed, then read through the article carefully, but it seems the text doesn't actually explain "why" printers do this. What am I missing?
- Aachen 5y agoSame here. Who convicted them to all start doing it? Why do they put up with this and screw with their customers?
- 0des 5y agoIt is to track people printing fake currency.
- pessimizer 5y agoConsumer printers can't print even vaguely convincing currency. $20K and a good paper supplier might get you to vaguely convincing.
- TingPing 5y agoTracking printing of literally any fake document rather than just currency.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bsenftner 5y agoPrinters: a completely destroyed product. I gave up on printers over 20 years ago. They are shitty ruined products I do not waste any time on anymore. It's far easier to just have more screens than deal with the shit show called printers attached to computer networks failing to be a useful utility.
- Amin699 5y agoThere is a long-running debate over whether it is ethical for printers to be attaching this information to documents without users knowing. In fact, there has even been a suggestion that it is a violation of human rights and one MIT project has tracked more than 45,000 complaints to printer companies about the technology.
- egberts 5y agoThat’s why the end-user should maintain separate firewalled subnet (DMZ) networks for their unique grouping of IoT, cable settops, PC/Mac, mobile devices and in-house servers. Only problem i’ve had with this setup is during the configuration of IoT where mobile device must be on same subnet as IoT devices, that is all.
- cosmin800 5y agoThis is really old news.
- garaetjjte 5y agoBut what's the incentive for printer manufacturers to do it at all? It isn't mandated by any law. Some three letter agency comes to them with offer they can't refuse? Or they give them bazillions of dollars in exchange?
- amalcon 5y agoThe incentive is that they'd rather do it on their own, than be forced into doing it. Adding the fingerprinting dots on their own gives the manufacturers control over how the fingerprinting works, lets them do it in the most inexpensive way, and means they don't need to submit proof of the fingerprinting feature.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt also likely involves a behind the scenes tit for tat. How many government provision contracts has Hewlett-Packard closed?
- Forge36 5y ago"if we implement this the FBI won't be visiting us to ask for help as often" That's probably enough incentive for most to do it once known or suggested
- magpi3 5y agoIt would be an unbelievable scandal if it came out that the U.S. government was forcing all U.S. printer companies to do something like this.
- tirpen 5y agoWould it really? Things like this are revealed all the time, half the public doesn't care and the other half already know we are living in a surveilance dystopia and are not surprised about it.
- 5y ago
- FridayoLeary 5y agoI've been thinking of a similar idea for the last few weeks. It's interesting that it is apparently already common practice.
- macpete42 5y agoWould it be possible to print out on a piece of yellow paper to make the yellow dots undetectable?
- macpete42 5y agoHow about adding custom additional yellow dots to render the hidden information useless?
- mrtweetyhack 5y agoOpensource DIY printer
- qvobilqwnimshme 5y agoIf you don't know by now, printing has changed. It's no longer just about what happens in the office. Now, people want to print from where they want, when they want. And that means a lot more printing is happening on devices not managed by IT departments. This means printers are more susceptible to malware since their regular security updates aren't coming from IT — they're coming from manufacturers of the printer or operating systems or third party apps used on them. https://www.braindumps4it.com/braindumps-HP2-I06.html https://www.braindumps4it.com/braindumps-HP2-I06.html