Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Printers leave a watermark on each page indicating the exact printer that it came from. Are there any other examples of these privacy violations that aren't common knowledge? (ttrpg.network)

submitted 2 months ago by thepompe@ttrpg.network to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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One thing I'm concerned about is recording equipment leaving identifiable information without us knowing about it.

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[–] grandel@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

~~Ive never noticed this or heard that printers do that.~~

~~Is this maybe specific to the USA?~~

Edit: TIL, thank you!

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 2 months ago

Printer Tracking Dots

[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's not specific to USA... They do it everywhere - with color-printers. Don't know if they do it with B/W printers.

They claim it's to track people who try to print money, but if it were, then they wouldn't really do it on laser printers too...

If you print a photo on a regular paper, and then shine an UV-light on it, you can see it. It's mostly small yellow dots.

[–] grey_maniac@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There is software you can use that adds all the other dot patterns to essentially anonymize your printer.

[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

I know - but it's good that you added that to what I wrote. :-)

[–] mukt@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

They use yellow ink for that in colour printers.

[–] pirat@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I just occured to me that could be the reason for when a color printer wont even let you print, say, pure black text, even though it only has emptied some of the colored ink, but still has plenty of black ink left to do the job...

[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Did I not write that?

[–] mukt@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 months ago

You wrote more, much; but left this to inference.

I highlighted one bit: yellow.