I didn’t know this is being done. Your color laser printer is actually printing something on your printouts without you even knowing that it does!

From Boing-Boing:

We’ve known that our printers are spying on us, ever since the Electronic Frontier Foundation cracked the secret codes in the output of color laser printers. These hidden codes — apparently placed at the behest of the Secret Service — identify the serial number, make and model of the printer that printed them, as well as a date and timestamp.

What we didn’t know is that if you ask the manufacturer of your printer to stop spying on you, they respond by ratting you out to the Secret Service as a dangerous subversive, and a few days later, the SS will show up and ask you why you care about your privacy.

Here’s the Boing-Boing entry on EFF cracking the secret code:

Many color laser printers hide information about your printer’s serial number and the date and time of your print job in every job you print. It’s believed that this is done to get your equipment to incriminate you without your knowledge. Now EFF has decoded the information-hiding scheme on the Xerox Docucolor series, by getting EFF supporters to print out pages from their printers and mail them to our researchers, who examined them under magnification and special light and cracked the code.

I’m so not in. Geesh, good thing I have no plans of getting a laser printer.

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Sorry about not posting yesterday. Got sidelined by something.