How about those people who calls you on the phone to offer their products and services.  Mostly from banks, insurance companies, and traders.  There are even those who claimed to be associated with the government and military selling tickets for certain events.  The question is where are they getting those information about us?  Perhaps from our applications or certain contests.  Private information passed on to people we don't know.  Scary situation really.

Just recently, a research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco consumer privacy group reported that there are codes embedded in printouts made by some color laser printers that can be used to track the origin of a printed document. It is an invisible bar code of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.  EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen, EFF intern Robert Lee, and volunteers Patrick Murphy and Joel Alwen compared dots from test pages sent in by EFF supporters, noting similarities and differences in their arrangement, and then found a simple way to read the pattern.

EFF was founded in 1990 to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today.  The group is made up of passionate people, lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries all working to protect user rights and the rights of web surfers everywhere.

The group said that they have only broken the code for Xerox DocuColor printers but added that other models from other manufacturers include the same personally identifiable information in their tracking dots.  Certain models from other printer brands included in the list are: Brother, Canon CLC/ImageRunner, Dell, Epson AcuLaser, HP Color LaserJet, Konica/Minolta, Kyocera, Lanier, Lexmark, Ricoh, Savin, Tektronix, and Xerox.

For a complete list, visit http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php.

According to EFF, the DocuColor series prints a rectangular grid of 15 by 8 miniscule yellow dots on every color page. The same grid is printed repeatedly over the entire page, but the repetitions of the grid are offset slightly from one another so that each grid is separated from the others. The grid is printed parallel to the edges of the page, and the offset of the grid from the edges of the page seems to vary. These dots encode up to 14 7-bit bytes of tracking information, plus row and column parity for error correction.  They can be made visible by magnification using a magnifying glass or microscope, or by illuminating the page with blue instead of white light.

While no law appears to require the manufacturers to embed the hidden dots, Xerox admitted that it provided these tracking dots to the government, but indicated that only the U.S. Secret Service had the ability to read the code.  Xerox also said that the company was simply assisting an agency that asked for help.  HP on the other hand said that it is involved in anti-counterfeiting measures and supports the cooperation between the printer industry and those who are working to reduce counterfeiting.   The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers to identify counterfeiters.  It's strictly a countermeasure to prevent illegal activity specific to counterfeiting they said.

With the advancement of imaging and printing technology, there are people who use this technology for illegal activities like counterfeiting.  And I would say these hidden codes are a good measure in fighting the crime.  But I think the general public should also be told which particular forms of technology encode serial number or other information in its output, and have a choice about whether to use that technology or not.  And is it not that full transparency is part and parcel of a good customer relationship between the seller and the buyer? 

It is just sad to realize that privacy in technology is such a rarity.  Technology that can track user's online habits, malicious codes that can capture user information, technology that can record keyboard sounds which can be used to replicate documents, technology that allow other users to use your PC to infiltrate other PCs, and now printers that can be used to identify its owners.  Simply mind-boggling and unbelievable.  Incidents like this should convince companies to give more attention to their corporate security policies.  Make it a point to be ready and if possible, be one step ahead than the threats that are available waiting to do damage to vulnerable I.T. systems.

If this kind of technology was kept secret to the general public and will be discovered or revealed after some time, it is only normal that users might think that something fishy or suspicious is going on.  Yes, it is true that there is nothing to be afraid of if we are not using our printers for any illegal activities, but as I've said, knowing that some of my information is given out to some groups or people will somehow make you feel uneasy.  You be the judge if this is an invasion of privacy or not.

For the Philippine printer users, I think there is nothing to worry about.  According to a distributor friend of mine, printers sold here are coming from Singapore and not from the U.S.  So there is a big chance that our printers are not equipped with the embedded codes.  But to be sure, I am inviting my printer manufacturer friends to air their side of the story and I guarantee you that it will have a space here in TechNews Reality Bites.

Let me end by sharing with you what Seth David Schoen said: "It's disturbing that something on this scale, with so many privacy implications, happened with such a tiny amount of publicity."

Am logging off.  God Bless us all!!!

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