Protip: Your printer may be a spai.

Attention Anonymous:

This is just a heads up for those of you who may not be up on hardware news. This is not a serious threat, but it is something to keep in mind if one is performing clandestine deeds.

http://www.eff.org/issues/printers

and

http://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

tl;dr Many common brands of color printer include a unique pattern of nearly invisible yellow dots that can be used by forensic people to match a document with the printer it came from. The rationale is to aid law enforcement in the apprehension of those who include "printing my own money" as a hobby.

Choosy anons choose Kinko's. Even for the original.

Attention Scientologists:

Hello! This is an excellent way to track down our identities. Spend lots of your time and money pursuing this route. Our flyers are free! (Scientology is not) You can easily get some and crack the secret pattern with your spai decoder rings.

annonilate wrote:

Attention Anonymous:

This is just a heads up for those of you who may not be up on hardware news. This is not a serious threat, but it is something to keep in mind if one is performing clandestine deeds.

http://www.eff.org/issues/printers

and

http://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

tl;dr Many common brands of color printer include a unique pattern of nearly invisible yellow dots that can be used by forensic people to match a document with the printer it came from. The rationale is to aid law enforcement in the apprehension of those who include "printing my own money" as a hobby.

Choosy anons choose Kinko's. Even for the original.

Attention Scientologists:

Hello! This is an excellent way to track down our identities. Spend lots of your time and money pursuing this route. Our flyers are free! (Scientology is not) You can easily get some and crack the secret pattern with your spai decoder rings.

INVISIBLE DOTS

WEIRD...

They refuse to put identifying tags in explosives, but they stick invisible yellow dots in our printers...

so if this just started happening i wouldnt be too worried about it if your using a printer thats more than a year old. but still i think its safe to say "BLAST! thwarted again"

I've been aware of this for several years. According to the EFF, it started becoming public knowledge in 2005. We must assume that it's one or two years older than that.

annonilate wrote:

I've been aware of this for several years. According to the EFF, it started becoming public knowledge in 2005. We must assume that it's one or two years older than that.

Good thing Kinko's loves us!

So... the original printer prints yellow dots.

Then you run the original through a b/w copier. What's that do to the dots?

It -does- explain though why my printer runs out of frakking yellow ink so ludicrously fast.

A Noun? A Miss! wrote:

So... the original printer prints yellow dots.

Then you run the original through a b/w copier. What's that do to the dots?

It -does- explain though why my printer runs out of frakking yellow ink so ludicrously fast.

Conspiracy to buy MOAR INK

Although, refilling them is cheaper.

A Noun? A Miss! wrote:

So... the original printer prints yellow dots.

Then you run the original through a b/w copier. What's that do to the dots?

It -does- explain though why my printer runs out of frakking yellow ink so ludicrously fast.

OMG that's the reason why! When i print out like 500-1000 or so fliers and set it to low quality Black and white only, i still run out of yellow ink. I fucking hate printers, and now i hate printer companies.

Yeah, recently I had to get MOAR YELLER and I was all like "what the hell have I been printing in yellow?" I thought maybe it was mapquest stuff but NOW I KNOW.

AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.

AGAINST THE MAN.