Tech Goes Boom

Lexmark is not your friend

Hat tip to Engadget for finding this.

Quick synopsis: Lexmark is installing spyware along with their print drivers that secretly report the serial number, ink usage, print, scanning and OCR information back to a non-descript URL. Lexmark of course denied that they were doing this until confronted with incriminating evidence, at which time they claimed it was harmless demographic tracking which wouldn't be tied to customer data (despite a serial number being transmitted".

Read one of the threads about it here.

Now it is certainly plausible that Lexmark really wanted to get hard numbers on how their products are being used so they could make better choices on how to spend development dollars and which products to bring to market. But to illicitly make every customer an unknowing participant in this data gathering is irresponsible and unethical. At the very least they should have had a check box available during the software install that allowed you to opt in for discounts on ink or paper or a future purchase. Marketing data is valuable and the customer is getting no compensation for providing that data.

The more conspiracy minded among us could also come to a more nefarious conclusion about this spyware. Given their failed court battle over third party ink cartridges, one could easily see lexmark looking for innovative ways of telling when users are using these cartridges. The spyware reports actual drops used. Say Lexmark knows how many drops each ink cartridge uses and includes a tolerance for environmental differences. Third party carts probably offer comparable volume, or more ink in each cart. Lexmark starts shipping carts with a very minor, but measurably smaller amount of ink. They keep track of ink usage on your printer and note that there is no way you could have used x amount of ink with x amount of their carts. You must be using third party ink. Your serial number is flagged. You call in for support for a non-ink related issue, or have to have your printer serviced, and you are denied for using third party ink and voiding your warranty. Great stuff.