It's called the Pirates Bay.

<puts on tinfoil hat>

But if you bought a used printer, and that printer was used to commit a crime, and a flier you posted around town links you to the printer...

Then it is yet another example of the bajillions of unlikely coincidences that could result in circumstantial evidence I had committed a crime that I did not.

Similarly, if I ejaculate into a tissue and then tissue ends up momentarily near the vagina of the dead prostitute in the garbage truck it could create the appearance I had something to do with the test. If I go around jerking off onto every fire hydrant in the neighborhood it is not a violation of my privacy if the police somehow trace this back to me and connect it to the garbage truck corpse. It is if they force every male in the city to submit a DNA sample for comparison.

I'm not denying there it creates a forensic trail. I'm just saying that forensic trails are not inherently violations of privacy. And I agree that for the most part the printer/copier forensic trail is one that has little reason to exist but it still isn't really a violation of privacy, in my opinion. Especially if entered into knowingly (as I have with every printer/copier I've purchased in almost the last decade since I learned of it).

Nevertheless, I'm buying my next printer with cash!

For the average user yeah, a printer watermark isn't really that big of a deal. But if you plan on printing anything that might cause people to want to target you, whether for political, religious, social (etc.) reasons, then it's a good idea to know exactly what your printer is doing behind the scenes and how to defeat it.

Or reverse that. Maybe you want to leave a trace for whatever reason. It's good to know which printers have this feature.

I think it's good to have a working knowledge of how our gadgets are "spying" on us. Not necessarily for protection or even for privacy, but so we can have the choice of opting in. I think it's ridiculous that such tracking systems aren't made known openly.

One might argue that such secrecy is necessary to make it work, otherwise the bad guys will defeat it. I say that's a load of crap.

Just glancing at the HP printers listed, they are all color laser jets and your average home ink jet printer. So, go ahead and print all of the dirty docs you want. You're safe.

We use HP LaserJets (1600 and 2600) at work.

Alex Stroup wrote this:

Hey Moonbatliner, forget printer dots. You'd better ditch paper altogether:

http://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/fe...odity-scanners