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Ask HN: Brother printers sending ink data to Amazon?
A most unusual thing. Every once in a while I get an email from Amazon that it's time to re-order Brother ink. I always delete these because I rarely print, but also figure it's just Amazon reminding me to buy something.
Today I decided to opt out/unsubscribe once and for all. Instead I see this at the bottom of the email:
"Click here to view or manage settings, including the option to opt out if you are already using another replenishment service.
This took me to https://drs-web.amazon.com/settings
"The data shown is based on estimated consumption reported by smart devices and orders you place through Amazon."
Here it had a link to "Consumption history" which upon clicking showed me the ink levels of my Brother printer for the past two weeks. Date and time.
WTF?! It is not apparent that I can disable this function. Can anyone else duplicate?
Update : This is part of Alexa it seems, and folded in to the Dash replenishment protocol; note I have never had a Dash button.
Amazon's instructions for this were not very helpful.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201357520
Some digging revealed a Brother help document:
https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/172810/~/cancel-enrollment-%28amazon-smart-reorders%29
This bothers me quite a lot. I never authorized, opted in, or gave either device permission to connect, let alone Amazon to monitor and nag me about it!
Model: Brother MFC-J485DW
Purchased from: Best Buy, an American retailer, after July of 2019.
Firmware: N1901041316
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoWhat model printer?
- Ajay-p 3y agoSorry, just added it. Brother MFC-J485DW
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoWhat year was it manufactured? Manuals seem to be from 2016. That's a bit earlier than I'd expect this kind of behavior (not conclusive of anything. Just an observation). Do you have a firmware date?
- Ajay-p 3y agoCurrent firmware is N1901041316 I do not have a manufacturer date but it would have been purchased in 2019 or later.
- OJFord 3y agoHow has it linked with your Amazon account then? Just because you bought the printer from Amazon? (As they do with their own devices, e.g. Fire TV Sticks, of course.)
- Ajay-p 3y agoThe printer was purchased at a store called Best Buy. The only interaction that it has ever had with my Amazon account was that I ordered a single purchase of replacement ink cartridges. The idea of it monitoring their status is abhorrent to me and I don't think I would have ever opted in for such thing. Perhaps there was something requiring me to opt out, but ...it was not apparent. When my Alexa searched for devices connected to my network, it must have noted this printer, then compared it to the fact I ordered ink for it, and just to be extra helpful decided to monitor its levels for me. I can think of no other way...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Brian_K_White 3y agoI would not rule out some connection via the credit/debit card, like how every shop now emails you even though you never gave them your email.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoMaybe Amazon tags the serial number of the cartridge and correlates it to your printer with the data Brother gives them. Fucking crazy.
- xfitm3 3y agoI get an error on https://drs-web.amazon.com/settings https://drs-web.amazon.com/settings – has it been taken down? I also have a Brother printer, which I bought from Amazon.
- Ajay-p 3y agoremoves glasses... MOG... That is INTERESTING. Here is an image of the email I received https://imgur.com/a/fhvZlsd https://imgur.com/a/fhvZlsd and the current status of the web page: https://imgur.com/jkTD4Xp https://imgur.com/jkTD4Xp I am speechless. This link brought up a narrow page of blue. Is there any way to recover that? Firefox browser. I would love to capture that .. oh I kick myself now for not grabbing a SS.
- greyface- 3y ago"You are receiving this message because you connected your Brother MFC-J485DW to Alexa on 5/4/21" What happened on 5/4/21? You say you bought the printer after July 2019, so it probably wasn't the printer purchase date. Does that line up with the date you bought or installed an ink cartridge from Amazon, or set up Alexa?
- qingcharles 3y agoWhen you found that page originally you must have either got there from a POST from another page, or a prior page set a cookie which this page gobbled.
- crazygringo 3y agoThe feature seems perfectly fine for those who want it, but the idea that you never opted in is troubling. So the question is, how did your printer get linked to your Amazon account? Possibilities: 1) You registered your printer with Brother (possibly when setting up wireless or cloud services) and put in your email address which is also the one associated with Amazon. Did you opt in without realizing (via a dark pattern? hidden in TOS?)? Or did they opt you in without any consent at all? 2) You bought the printer from Amazon and they already knew the printer serial number (common with certain electronics brands) and that's how it got associated. Perhaps there's a notice on the add-to-cart or checkout page that you'll be enrolled, or an opt-in checkbox? Or maybe it is without consent?
- Ajay-p 3y agoSee my other comment on this. I did not register it with Brother, and have no account with Brother. Given this is Amazon, I cannot help but feel pessimistic that this was done without consent.
- crazygringo 3y agoAh ha, it turns out there's a third option -- Alexa automatically finds printers on your network and checks their ink levels: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=19820259011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=19820259011 So it doesn't seem to have anything to do specifically with Brother at all. Mystery solved. It's an Alexa feature ("feature"). So feel free to be angry at Amazon, but it's not Brother doing anything wrong. It's just reporting ink levels to anybody on your local network who asks, just like every other printer. You might want to change your headline since it accuses Brother rather than Amazon.
- RajT88 3y agoYou can turn this off in the Alexa app. I went looking for it after reading that page. It's under Settings > Device Discovery (near the bottom of the settings). It's on by default of course.
- orev 3y agoIf you have the printer on your network, and any Amazon device on your network, the Amazon device could easily query the printer for ink levels. My Home Assistant does this and I never connected HA to the printer. It’s just part of the status information the printer seems to make available on the network. It’s not surprising to me that Amazon would do this using one of their devices, as everyone seems to be grabbing as much data as they can. It’s probably described in the T&Cs somewhere (that they can scan your network and use data from it).
- RIMR 3y agoTime to learn everything they scan for, and set up a honeypot that makes people's Amazon devices fill with dummy devices.
- Ajay-p 3y agoIt’s probably described in the T&Cs somewhere Which.. I never read but I concur with your theory.
- wepple 3y agoWhilst it might be in the T&Cs somewhere, it’s the not-good variety of surprise that a company should really try to avoid. I don’t have Alexa devices on my network, and I’m glad. I do have other vendor smart things, and I’d absolutely expect a notification if they were going to be poking around at my other devices to send information off to a company for their benefit. Poor play, Amazon
- kxrm 3y agoThis is why IoT devices on my network get their own subnet and they are blocked from communicating with anything but what I allow them to communicate with, including the Internet. Also I want to make it clear, it shouldn't have to be this way. Devices should be transparent about how they function, but sadly they are not.
- t0bia_s 3y agoAlso you can use DNS filter like NextDNS.io to block specific domains. How you setup your LAN printer from subnet to get data from your your main subnet?
- mnd999 3y agoIf you cared about privacy you won’t have an Alexa device in your house.
- aintgonnatakeit 3y agoExactly
- trvr 3y agoThis reddit post from 3 years ago suggests that Amazon is using SNMP to monitor your local network printers. Put your Amazon devices in an isolated "IOT" network if possible. https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ip5i1c/alexa_now_monitoring_working_with_my_ancient/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ip5i1c/alexa_no...
- Ajay-p 3y agoThat is an excellent idea, thank you! I have some micro routers that I can use.
- trvr 3y agoWhat model(s) of Alexa devices do you have, if you don't mind sharing?
- Ajay-p 3y agoI have a 3rd gen Echo Dot
- trvr 3y agoYou could also try changing the "SNMP Community String" on your Brother printer and see if your "consumption history" stops. https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/164663/~/configure-snmp-settings https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/164663/...
- jabroni_salad 3y agoThis is the real solution. Pretty much all printers accept read/write from public by default and share a lot of info about themselves. Any program on your computer could do this if it wants, the only surprise here is that it took this long for anyone to bother.
- Ajay-p 3y agoThat is a great solution. I found that I can go to http://IPAddress/net/net/sntp.html http://IPAddress/net/net/sntp.html and disable SNTP. I also scrambled the Primary SNTP Server Address, and put the synchronization interval to as high as it would go; 100 hours.
- pengaru 3y agoYou backdoored your own network by putting an Alexa on it. I wouldn't be surprised if Ring cameras pulled the same shit. If you really must have this trash on your lan, you have to isolate it at the network level.
- koyote 3y agoI've recently changed my home network to ensure all IoT devices are on their own VLAN where they can't talk to each-other and only have access to the internet. I see my paranoia was not unwarranted. That being said, if I had a network printer, I would've connected it to yet another VLAN I have set up which does not even have access to the internet. Setting all this up required quite a bit of time, effort and networking/firewall knowledge. I wonder if there's a market for providing such capabilities out of the box for the less tech-inclined privacy-conscious consumers.
- qingcharles 3y agoI for one would pay for such a thing. I hate spending hours tinkering with network/firewall rules. It's dull as hell and a huge time sink to get everything right. And I have three decades of Linux knowledge. How is man-on-the-street supposed to do any of this stuff? :(
- shiroiuma 3y agoIt'd be nice if more routers were covered by OpenWRT, and if it had a really convenient "wizard" for setting this kind of thing up. Of course, both of these are hard problems.
- miki123211 3y ago> less tech-inclined privacy-conscious consumers That group is much smaller than most tech-conscious people imagine (at least outside of Germany). My experience with people outside of the tech bubble is that people care a lot more about privacy from their bosses / exes / partners / parents (and very occasionally law enforcement), but almost never about privacy from big companies. The only thing that actually makes people scared is seeing ads for products that they were recently discussing in person, and that's actually due to coincidence and search history, not, as they think, devices listening on them. I keep pointing this out every time the same thing happens on (linear) TV.
- 20after4 3y agoWhat makes you so sure that devices aren't listening? Apparently there used to be (maybe still is) a loophole where apps can listen for specific keywords the same way the phone listens for "hey siri" or "ok google" ... apps can stuff a whole bunch of keywords into the list and listen for them that way without explicitly processing all of the audio from your device.
- QuinnyPig 3y agoThis is deeply disturbing.
- briHass 3y agoAmazon does the same thing if you link a Samsung Smartthings hub and those little sensors have a low battery. This is basically the 'promise' of all this smart home junk: your fridge automatically adds milk to your Amazon cart when it scans the contents and sees the level is low. A dubious convenience for users, but an excellent way for companies to ensure you keep buying things from them.
- PrivateButts 3y agoRelated is that Alexa seems to like to add any HP printers nearby with WiFi direct still on, and relentlessly remind you when the neighbor's printer ink is low. I have ~20 random printers in my Alexa account that I don't own and keep reappearing whenever Alexa scans for new devices.
- pluc 3y agoPeople realizing shit in their homes has an API because smart devices started poking it will never not be funny.
- sam_on_the_run 3y agoI have an HP multi-function laster printer and got a similar message yesterday about my black toner running low. Got the same email with the same useless instructions to opt-out. I have and would never opt-into this feature. I have a feeling this is alexa searching your network and helping itself to your devices.
- maamarazaq 3y ago[dead]
- JohnFen 3y agoThis kind of thing is precisely why I won't touch IoT things with a ten foot pole. You don't know what they're doing. Scanning my network and interacting with other machines on my network without my overt permission is way over the line. It's also not worth it to me to isolate them on my network. It's easier to only allow devices that I have control over. These devices cannot be trusted.
- hnburnsy 3y agoDoes anyone know if setting the printer admin password will disallow querying of the ink level by other network devices? >Protect your Brother machine against unauthorised access over the network https://support.brother.com/g/b/faqend.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&prod=mfcj285dw_us&faqid=faq00003195_003 https://support.brother.com/g/b/faqend.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&...