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by schoen 3303 days ago
I'm confused about why people consistently think that this was a total secret, no matter how many waves of press coverage it gets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography

There were press articles about it by 2004 (and I think some earlier), we had written the tool that Rob Graham used to decode these scans by 2005, and I gave a number of TV interviews about it during 2005. A small number of manufacturers (maybe worried about European data protection laws) also alluded to the existence of the technology in their user manuals. Some of the people from industry who contacted me also said that this was common knowledge to people in the printing industry since at least the turn of the millennium.
2 comments
Mathnerd314 3303 days ago
None of those are enough. Unless the spying feature is directly marketed to consumers, e.g. a TV ad that says "Buy a color printer THAT SPIES ON YOU today!", >92% of the population will never learn about it. (That estimate being from the # who don't read license agreements: https://measuringu.com/eula/)

Generally, anything that less than half of the population knows abut is a secret (e.g., menstruation is still called a "secret" in some circles...), so you shouldn't be confused, just disappointed at how gullible / uninformed the average person is.

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bubblethink 3303 days ago
>Unless the spying feature is directly marketed to consumers, e.g. a TV ad that says "Buy a color printer THAT SPIES ON YOU today!", >92% of the population will never learn about it.

Heh. The tagline for this car HUD (http://www.jbl.com/connected-car/CP100+LEGEND.html) says, "Now your car can be on the grid too". That's getting pretty close to your tagline.

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rhizome 3303 days ago
people consistently think that this was a total secret

As far as I've seen, this isn't true.

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schoen 3303 days ago
Maybe I should say "regularly"?
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rhizome 3303 days ago
It sounds like you're being surprised that anybody doesn't know about it, even if they're in a risky position themselves, which seems disingenuous.

Before today, what was the most likely path to this knowledge? As in one month ago...and how many 26 year olds have occasion to learn themselves the details of printers? Nobody uses printers.

Yes, working in that position it would be more likely, but she still could merely be a corner case when it comes to laser printer dot awareness, even within the IC.

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taeric 3303 days ago
I'm curious if there is a "half life" to this knowledge. Or, rather, what that would be.
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