this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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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.”

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[–] MeekerThanBeaker 186 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Good guy HP: Trying to save the planet by making their printers so bad no one wants to print anymore. 👍

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

For those who are completely clueless, this is meant as satire

[–] raynethackery 163 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Good way to get banned from large corporations. I know my compliance department isn't going to trust language like that.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 9 months ago

Two words: Corporate Espionage.

Anyone whose business plans overlap with HP's even a fraction should run for the fucking kills and buy Brothers.

[–] slumlordthanatos 20 points 9 months ago (7 children)

I imagine this is only for consumer-grade printers. HP's business-class devices are usually purchased under a contract.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

The mere fact that HP is demonstrating they can do this, even if they pinky swear they won't do it for corporate or business clients means that any business worth their salt will avoid buying HP products.

[–] slaacaa 16 points 9 months ago

I would assume this offer is meant for the lowly peasants like us, not other big corpos. Though most likely the printer industry is struggling, and they are gasping at straws, trying to mine data in the hope they can monetize it somehow

[–] Boozilla 82 points 9 months ago (1 children)

TIL HP stands for Hostile to Privacy.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] ChapulinColorado 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 75 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I feel like corps have gotten bored with "you will own nothing and you will be happy" and moved on to "you will be owned and you will be happy." Like, damn, people are absolute livestock in a freaky fucked-up way. You "buy" something and it sits there extracting value from you. You "rent" something and it gets to enjoy the utility you provide, for a time.

Just seems like "ownership" is totally screwed-up wrong, y'know? One can't have anything any more, it's all corporate property they let us pay to install into our own lives for them. grumblegrumblegrumble!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

But this is the whole point; for a publicly traded company the people who buy their products are not the customers for whom they create value. Shareholders and investors are the real customers. People who buy the products are precisely just a resource to extract value from for these companies.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

seems like we should get at least 3/5ths of a vote on the matter

[–] [email protected] 60 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What in the dystopian fuck?

[–] SlopppyEngineer 11 points 9 months ago

HP, proud frontrunner in late stage capitalism

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[–] foggy 53 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ok boys, 10,000 copies of goatse. Grayscale to save money.

[–] Ensign_Crab 43 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"You are out of magenta"

"I have a black and white printer."

[–] EdibleFriend 33 points 9 months ago

Fuck you, out of magenta.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You'd have to be a complete mental deficient to go out and consciously decide to buy a brand new HP product in 2024. Every single day it's more bad publicity for HP and yet they don't receive any consumer backlash that lasts longer than the breath required to complain about it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ain't nobody printing much anymore, just shit companies finding ways to squeeze what customers are left. I got a b&w brother printer years ago and it's been doin just fine without all the extra "features". If brother went the way hp is going I wouldn't have a printer at home anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 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 4 points 9 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. "

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The first thing to do is not connecting a printer to internet.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 9 months ago

Forgot the 0th step - don't buy an HP printer

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

HP+ printers REQUIRE internet connection. Right from the start.

[–] dinckelman 24 points 9 months ago

I’m still all-in on never owning a ~~HP~~ printer again. I don’t need this in my life

[–] dual_sport_dork 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I can't foresee any way that could get abused to hell and back. No sir. Not even a little bit.

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[–] b3an 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

To pay for this privilege too? HP is insane. Avoid like the plague.

[–] HeyJoe 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's what I was thinking! I never paid for a printer subscription service, and I never will, but they are really telling me I get to pay them to take all my data as well? If this is marketed at businesses in any way its a privacy nightmare, which would probably mean even if they wanted to use them they couldn't due to sharing confidential information. I also wonder how many companies won't know this until they already use them and realize HP has data on them that now holds them liable.

[–] SlopppyEngineer 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Soon they'll have an ad supported model that prints ads on empty spots on the page and as a banner at the bottom.

[–] StuffYouFear 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh fuck please dont give them ideas

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[–] werefreeatlast 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Time to snif out the packets and replace them with cool things like

"BDSM_training_Gangbang_at_HPHQ_tuesday.pdf"

And the like. We could even just flood their database until they decide to block us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

This is the way.

Also can you send me a copy of that daddy

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

What the hell is HP's printers unit smoking?!?!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Whatever it is i want some .

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[–] NounsAndWords 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do "printers" have an approval rating? Because I bet it's low.

[–] ShunkW 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'll stick to my Brother laser printer. Bought it during the pandemic and still haven't been through an entire toner cartridge. Never had an issue printing either.

I got it for work documents that needed signed and mailed and such. And I like to print out flow charts and the like for big projects so I can reference them without having to pull them up digitally.

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[–] moneyinphx 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Unless you are a business getting printers on commercial leases, do yourself a favour and just buy a Brother laser printer and stop having issues with printers and start saving money as well.

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[–] mriormro 14 points 9 months ago

I haven't owned a printer in, like, 10 years and I know I'm not an outlier. This sort of shit isn't necessarily going to bring me back into the fold.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

So, public espionage, no one sane should accept this behavior for something they paid for.

[–] wanderingmagus 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So what happens if on the off chance someone decides to use the government purchasing system for COTS purchases and convince the SCIF to use one of these HP printers, and then try printing TS//SCI or other highly classified national security documents on the printer? Asking for a friend.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Honest answer? The person doing the printing is likely penalized at best, and HP get a slap on the wrist at worst.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I've yet to meet one person who I think is dumb enough to subscribe to this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Can someone tell me why this is even necessary? Network printing has existed for almost as long as printers have and doesn't require the cloud. There are standard protocols for discovering printers on the network and sending prints to them. I'm on Linux, have never installed printer drivers or even manually set up a printer, and I can print just fine over the network, it just knows which device is a printer and I can send prints to it with a single click. It even knows what the printer's capabilities are, for example whether it can print double sided. Are people so afraid of the system print dialog that they insist on using HP's app or something?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I miss my Epson Stylus Color, had it around until i couldn't find cartridges for it anymore because.. built-in obsolescence.

[–] AA5B 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Damn HP! My three year old laptop that I mostly de-crappified was just updated with a pop up selling HP extended warranty. They made it look like a system dialog, there was no “quit”, and “send personal data to HP” was selected by default.

I had to explicitly select to not sending data, explicitly select to make the choice permanent instead of bugging me later, before clicking ok

Never again HP, never again. It’s so sad to see a formerly great engineering company stooping this low as just another sleazy huckster

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