Technology

59237 readers

2933 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

673

HP’s 'All-In' Printer Rental Watches Everything You Print, Tells HP All About It (www.extremetech.com)

submitted 8 months ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

65 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In addition to tracking the printer’s online or offline status, page count, and ink levels, your rented printer will look at the types of documents you’re printing (e.g., PDF, JPG, Word), the types of devices that initiated the print job, “peripheral devices,” and other “metrics” related to the service, the All-In Plan’s terms read. This is on top of the personal information HP collects upon initiating the plan, like your location and your company name (if you have one). By signing up for the service, the terms say, you “grant to HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display [your] non-personal data for its business purposes.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The whole printer-as-a-service thing felt odious from the get-go, so the first thing HP should have done was to front a whole lot of good faith: Don't spy on the customer. Don't sell the data you get. Encrypt all data that gets passed between printer and HP and don't look at anything except what is necessary to service the printer.

That HP couldn't even make this step seems to imply they don't care, or assume their customer base is just that easy to abuse, that it has to throw in lease terms, data collection and contrived inconvenience to halt service. That tells us the whole plan was created as a grift from the beginning, rather than a well-intended service that corrupted in time.

Maybe HP shareholders aren't using enough lubricant.

[–] FightinFalcn@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

That could be, or alternatively, they could be doing the classic corporate step back. "Oh you didn't like paying for hardware with limited control AND spying on you at all times? We're sorry, we will only rent your hardware like we planned, because we listen to you. "