Your computer printouts can reveal your identity

Slashdot  has a post today about a technology that is embedded in many printers that can actually identify when any given page was printed and, often, the serial number of the printer that printed it. 

According to the EFF’s website, the US government was able to convince “some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information” in a “purported effort to identify counterfeiters”.  Of course, there is really no way to know that the government, or anyone else for that matter, couldn’t use the data for other purposes as well.

The EFF has a cool page outlining how hard the dots are to see with the naked eye, what they look like with an enhanced picture and how to actually decode the dots on on specific printer type. 

When you think about the implications of the technology, things get a little scary.  If you fill out your little printer registration card, your printer’s serial number maps back to all sorts of information about you including your name, address, phone number, email address, what store you shopped at, where you were when you purchased it (which physical store you purchased it from), etc.  When you extrapolate that data out, if someone had access to the store records they could figure out what else you purchased, what credit card you used, what time you purchased it, etc.  It all makes for some pretty scary privacy implications when you think about the current capabilities of all the data mining outfits out there.

The EFF is pursuing a campaign to investigate the uses of the data and how widespread the technology is in regards to which printers are affected and it sounds like the EU government has some concerns about the technology as well.