do you have or use a laser printer you purchaced with a credit card?

[Prepper1]

If you do you better watch this.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...j7-mC9HOms

[Skean Dhude]

Been warning people about this for ages. It is why I have second hand printers and phones and pay cash when I can. Even so that is why they take away all you kit when they raid you fro littering now. To use that as an excuse to try and gather info on you.

Use your £5 PAYG phone to communicate. Take it apart and throw it away after a few calls. Use your printer to photocopy something that will put you in jail. Destroy it afterwards.

[Geordie_Rob]

Is there any evidence of these microdots? He certainly didn't provide any to back up his argument.

[Skean Dhude]

There was evidence somewhere. It is basically a serial number in yellow ink printed on the paper. It uniquely identifies the printer which can be traced to the Point of Sale and if you used a card to pay for it, to you.

I've never heard of it being used in a prosecution but you never know if that part of the evidence is suppressed for security reasons.

[BDG]

(30 December 2012, 20:55)Skean Dhude Wrote: There was evidence somewhere. It is basically a serial number in yellow ink printed on the paper. It uniquely identifies the printer which can be traced to the Point of Sale and if you used a card to pay for it, to you.

I've never heard of it being used in a prosecution but you never know if that part of the evidence is suppressed for security reasons.

It is not a real issue in the UK. When was the last time you bought such a thing that the person in the shop opened the box and scanned the serial number?

Never.

They always scan the bar code, and those are product specific, not item specific. The worst that could happen it that using the paper, the manufacturers could say which company it was shipped to, and that company might be able to say which branch it was sent to, then you would have to say dates between and pull the records of all of the people who purchased the printer - some of them may have paid cash so they would have to identify those through CCTV.

These dots do exist, rest assured. It is something that has been in place for years, photocopiers printing in black also do this.

Now, the fools that register their printers online - they are the ones - they dun goofed.

[Geordie_Rob]

I've just printed a page of text off & after quite a good look, there are no dots anywhere to be seen. I even used a magnifying glass

Whilst I can't say 100% they aren't there, I'm not convinced on this 1 I'm afraid.

[BDG]

So small they only appear with specialist lighting. Either way, its not matter to me. The only thing I print off is patterns for wood working - they get glued to a bit of wood, wood cut out, pattern removed or sanded off, it end up on the workshop floor and so in a wood burner or fire.

[Skean Dhude]

If I re3member correctly they are near the margin on one side, are light yellow and are like a bar code. Not all printers put them on but most of the big manufacturers did. I'll ask some questions in Xerox and see what the answer is.