You have probably tried to print a document in black and white and encountered the message that your printer is out of color – while you actually wanted to print in black and white. There is a secret behind this in your printer that probably very few people know.
Disclaimer: The title image is a symbolic image and shows a random printer.
How does your printer work for the government? Many color laser printers or copiers add a so-called Machine Identification Code to your printed pages. This is a type of marking that allows your color printer to be identified.
The Machine Identification Code is printed onto the paper during the printing process using yellow ink. The color printer marking appears as small yellow dots that are about a tenth of a millimeter in size and almost invisible to the naked eye.
The system was developed in the 1980s in the USA to prevent the printing of counterfeit money, but it became known to the public only in 2004.
If the code is read, various information can be obtained, such as the serial number of the device or the date and time of the printing process. This can help law enforcement agencies track the origin of leaked confidential documents.
In 2017, for example, whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner was caught by the FBI through the color printer marking while leaking confidential documents (via nytimes).
So if your printer struggles when printing a black-and-white document because it supposedly has too little color, it may be due to the Machine Identification Code. It is quite possible that your yellow ink has been used up by the small dots.
Does this have any consequences for you? Not really. Of course, the serial number of your printer and the date of printing can be determined from the color printer marking, but unless you are leaking confidential documents, this information probably has little relevance to your life.
However, critics raise concerns that the color printing marking intrudes into the user’s privacy since it can determine the owner of a printer and the date of printing.
Can you protect yourself from the marking? If you place a high value on your privacy and want to protect it while printing, there are various ways to do so. For example, you could print the entire page in yellow, but that would consume a lot of toner. Alternatively, there is software that anonymizes your printer by means of additional yellow dots.
Curiously, unauthorized sharing of confidential military documents also occurs in the gaming world – the community of the game War Thunder has been involved in various leaks several times. For example, when a player leaks confidential military documents because he found a tank in the free-to-play MMO not realistic enough.
