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List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots

(www.eff.org)
586 points prawn | 2 comments | 06 Jun 17 22:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kazinator ◴[06 Jun 17 23:34 UTC] No.14502473[source]▶
Paying cash for the printer should mitigate things. At best they can tell something like that the page was printed by something that passed through a BestBuy warehouse in your town in the first quarter of last year, and that's it.

Buy a printer hundreds of miles away from home while on a road trip, pay cash, and then do whatever you want with it: print yourself a hundred million dollars and enjoy your print-irement. :)

Simply the awareness about the possibility of tracking goes a long way.

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1. vacri ◴[07 Jun 17 02:11 UTC] No.14503190[source]▶
If your printer is on a network, it can 'phone home' in most cases. They now know which IP address the printer lives behind. Get compromising document > look up serial number from dots > look up IP address from serial number > get address for IP from ISP (through means fair or foul). Payment option is irrelevant.
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2. kazinator ◴[08 Jun 17 03:13 UTC] No.14511631[source]▶
In those "most cases" when it's not blocked from doing so by your firewall.

If you were paranoid enough to pay cash for a printer somewhere far from home because of the tracking issue, you will probably block it from sending messages outside of your LAN.