[Printers] RE: printer-tracking--countermeasures?

[Pat Wood]

 Someone asked about using a mask of random yellow dots as an overlay to defeat the yellow dot mechanism.  I would guess that this won't work on all printers, as some put the yellow dots in the nonprintable area in the margin.  You're better off using B&W for anything that you really don't want tracked.  Note that other forensic techniques can uniquely identify the printer used for B&W output, but not without comparing the page in question against output from all suspect printers.  It is also possible to identify the manufacturer of a printer's engine (B&W or color) by analysis of the toner composition, which vary from company to company (note that Canon and Fuji Xerox OEM engines to a lot of third party, so you can't necessarily identify the brand of printer, just the engine manufacturer.

Pat Wood