Hi. Would you believe me if I told you that every time you print something out on a color laser printer like this, that there's actually a secret hidden code embedded on each and every printout that the government or whoever can use to actually track where this came from. And when you think I'm another right who goes around wearing one of these things, but I can assure you that it's true. There is a secret code printed on each and every printout from practically every color laser printer.

AHA Let's check it out. Let's go to the microscope. and no, this is not my regular attire. I Guarantee you it's true.

Let's go let me show you now. let's take a look at this printout that I just made from that Fuji Xerox Cm 205 Print up. let's have a look on that. Just a small amount of magnification.

This is a Times Four lens I've got here on my mantis Ally camp and I'm going to be able to show you exactly what I'm seeing through here and you don't need much magnification at all to see it. Let's have a look there. We go. There's Uncle Sam's eye okay and it all looks pretty normal.

We can see how it's actually made up and I can actually go into Times eight down there so you can see all the individual dots down there and you might have noticed. Maybe something a bit funny going on, but let's have a look down here. Okay, let's keep going off to the side and well, this is supposed to be blank, but there's lots of blue dots there that's actually part of the JPEG image. Don't worry about that, but what are those funny-looking yellow dots? Bingo! We've got ourselves the secret code that's on every single printout.

and let's take the test printing out from that exact printer. you know, the one that's built in. You used to just test it. Let's have a look.

Look there they are. Look. These yellow dots. They're on every single printout, regardless of whether or not you print this from a file, whether or not you use the photocopy function to print, or you use the included demo print or whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

It's got these yellow dots there, which are encoded with the serial number of the printer and the time and date as well. And look at them. There is Planers Day. You can see those yellow dots.

They stand out like a dog's hind leg and they're actually all over the page, all over it. You can see in there. It doesn't matter and they go. And I really felt on this particular printer.

They go fairly much all the way to the edge. It doesn't matter where it is you get though, even over the image that you print. If you look hard enough, there we go. we can see inside there, still see the yellow dots still embedded with inside the image.

Sneaky Bastards. Now it's not just on. Fuji Xerox printers. Let's take this: HP 3600 color laser printer.

This is the test printout from with inside the thing and it's not going to be as as perceptible, but you can still see. You can still see the yellow dots in there. These ones aren't as dark, they aren't as prominent, but they're still there and it's pretty much there on every laser printer on the market now. I'm not actually revealing anything new here.

this has been known about for many, many years. In fact, I Believe this started back in the 1990s when color laser printers got so good that Uncle Sam was a bit concerned that people might be able to counterfeit money on them and not entirely sure how it works. or I haven't seen any documents that actually put this into law that the manufacturers actually must include these secret hidden dots on these printers. But I believe it's been going on since at least the late 90s and this was actually exposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Hence, the shirt that I've got here. and they actually managed to decode the Fuji Doc you print code format, which we don't know if it's standard. It could be different for different manufacturers but at least one other manufacturer. Epson I Believe at least one of the models uses the same yellow dot scheme as what's used on the Fuji Doc Your print printers.

So the Aff were actually able to decode the dots on the Fuji Doc you print one that I've got here. and here's an image from them actually explaining the encoding format. You can see that the serial numbers included in there and the date and time. So you know any government, any agency, whoever can actually look at this, know what serial number that printer it is, and through purchasing records and everything else, they can track who actually purchase that printer and find out who printed whatever.

So if you're gonna print out your ransom note or whatever, just be sure you don't print it out on a color laser printer cuz you're going to come a guts up beyond a buscar. So this is actually quite a serious privacy issue because every single page you print of whatever it is you print on a printer that you purchased has this yellow dot code on it. There are some on the market that appear not to have these in the FF do have a bit of a list on what one's doing what ones don't but you know pretty much assume that any color laser printer that you buy on the market is going to have this built in. so I haven't seen any evidence of what this is actually for, whether or not it's a government requirement at all on all printer manufacturers.

at least because this is a US government initiative. Practically every manufacturer sells printers in the U.s. Elf they do. They might have to have this.

Not sure if there's any legislation behind if anyone knows anything about that, please post it in the comment links down below. But so it seems that the manufacturing printer manufacturers have sort of been complicit in this and said look, yeah, we'll add this, you know, no worries. So I hope you found that interesting. Then go have a look for yourself or you can use one of those crappy USB webcams for example.

It's not particularly hard, and if you can't if you've got like a hard to see one, you can actually put a blue LED on the thing and that will actually make the yellow dots actually appear dark and black so that they actually show up better. So you might want to give that a go, but it's on every prettier. This isn't a joke. they've been doing it for decades and not many people actually know about it and it goes under various names.

Printer Steganography for example, where steganography is the art of actually encoding information in play site basically. and that's what they're doing. Every pronounced scattered all over this page is that yellow code embedded in there, so they don't just want to put it down in one corner because then you can cut the thing out, it's all through your image. It's ridiculous.

So maybe you can actually contact your manufacturer and go hey I don't like this. Take it out and see what they say. Maybe they'll eventually get the message and they won't add this stuff to the printer so you can specifically buy one. You know, talk with your wallet, buy one and let them know why you're buying that one because it doesn't have this freaking forensic tracking on it.

It's ridiculous. So good on your! Uncle Sam Hope you found that video interesting. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. Catch you next time you.