Most (if not all) color printer makers are printing unique tracking dots on every printed page. But some of them are transparent about it and disclose it to consumers.¹

In any case, in the mid-1980s Xerox and Canon developed the anti-consumer feature decades before it became known to the public in 2004. So certainly we can blame them for surreptitiously assaulting our privacy.

It’s the surreptitious element of this that is the most infuriating. Transparently disclosing the feature to consumers is the socially responsible approach because at least informed consumers know they are signing up for:

  • reduction of print quality
  • higher cost of consumables (more yellow consumption)
  • loss of privacy
  • inability to print a black document when yellow ink/toner is empty

Xerox and Canon should be boycotted not just for the anti-consumer feature but for concealing it.

¹ citation needed… I don’t recall where I read that some printer makers are transparent about it. I would like to know which ones are transparent just from a standpoint of knowing where the integrity is.

Update- other threads on this topic:

  • evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.orgOPM
    2·
    18 days ago

    How do you communicate with your government? Electronically? When your gov outsources their email to Microsoft or Google and they provide no public key, and the only non-electronic means of communication is to a postal address, do you lick boots by sending data in-the-clear via the recipient’s MitM of choice?

    How do you do your anonymous whistle blowing when you cannot control the recipient’s means of communication?