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586 points prawn | 10 comments | | HN request time: 0.97s | source | bottom
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schoen ◴[] No.14502425[source]
I wrote this article/originally created this list, and I would like to emphasize that there is a second generation of this technology that probably uses dithering parameters or something of that sort, and that does not produce visible dots but still creates a tracking code. We don't know the details but we do know that some companies told governments that they were going to do this, and that some newer printers from companies that the government agencies said were onboard with forensic marking no longer print yellow dots.

That makes me think that it may have been a mistake to create this list in the first place, because the main practical use of the list would be to help people buy color laser printers that don't do forensic tracking, yet it's not clear that any such printers are actually commercially available.

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RachelF ◴[] No.14503474[source]
What is annoying is that the user pays for this. How much more yellow toner do I need to buy because my print outs are covered in yellow dots?

I wonder how many million extra gallons of yellow toner and ink are wasted every year printing these tracker dots?

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therein ◴[] No.14503608[source]
On some printers, this is the reason why the printer will refuse to print a BW-only printout while the only empty cartridge is the color one.
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1. anc84 ◴[] No.14504566[source]
That needs a citation or a sarcasm tag.
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2. mcv ◴[] No.14504808[source]
Does an anecdote count? My Samsung refuses to print b&w when a color cartridge is empty.
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3. dom0 ◴[] No.14504893[source]
I heard that before, I think it's a tactic to bully people into buying more ink they don't need. Ensuring tracking dots is maybe just an unfortunate side effect.
4. josefx ◴[] No.14504900[source]
Most likely it tries to print rich black, which uses color to make the b&w printout look better ( and use up all that costly color). You can disable that in your printer settings with most printers.
5. dspillett ◴[] No.14504927[source]
I've always assumed that is just lazy design (some resources that _might_ be needed are unavailable, report and refuse to print withut checking if they are actually needed for the current job) rather than due to a security (or even ink selling) measure. I've seen the behaviour as far back as the first colour photocopier I ever used.
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6. seszett ◴[] No.14504990{3}[source]
I've seen that as well a long time ago on a black+red photocopier, no yellow and probably no tracking patterns since red would have been quite visible.
7. anc84 ◴[] No.14505240[source]
No, the thing happening does not count as proof why it is happening. Printers refusing to print bw is widely known.
8. mort96 ◴[] No.14505412[source]
I would also be interested in a citation, but it does make sense; if tracking dots is well known (which they are), and it was easy to circumvent by just removing yellow toner, anyone somewhat technically adept would just remove their toner before printing their illegal documents.
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9. schoen ◴[] No.14508343[source]
This makes less sense than you might think because the original motivation from the government side was tracing counterfeit currency, not tracking all documents. Printing convincing counterfeit currency without yellow toner would be a challenge!

However, the governments did not succeed in limiting their technology to use in counterfeiting investigations, and may not even have attempted to do so.

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10. razorunreal ◴[] No.14510849{3}[source]
If that's true that just makes me angrier because a far better solution would be to improve the currency, like Canada and many other countries did long ago.