Laser printer dot code revealed
A secret code embedded in many colour laser jet printers allows the US
government and any other organisation capable of reading the cipher to
identify when the copies were made and on which particular machine,
according to research conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF).
The San Francisco-based privacy organisation said it had detected
almost invisible patterns of yellow dots on every document printed on
the affected machines that could indicate when and where the print was
made.
Among the copiers found to include the secret yellow dots are ones
made by Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, Konica/Minolta, Kyocera,
Lexmark, Ricoh, Tektronix/Toshiba and Xerox.
