Readers’ comments
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Disposable printers
I thought Barry Collins treated printers a little casually in “Wipe all your devices” (see issue 374, p26). Modern printers aren’t dumb appendages; they’re computers in their own right, and the more sophisticated they are, the more complexity in their operations. And there have been plenty of stories about their vulnerabilities over the years.
Some have non-volatile memory and may use it for storing your images while they manipulate them for printing. (Some have been known to hallucinate about what you were trying to print in an excess of zeal for economy of effort.)
Best to perform a factory reset before letting go of a printer.
David Singer
News and features editor Barry Collins replies:
I couldn’t agree more! To the extent that my advice was indeed to use the factory reset before disposing of them – advice, however, that bears repeating!