Brother printers sending ink data to Amazon?

If you have the printer on your network, and any Amazon device on your network, the Amazon device could easily query the printer for ink levels. My Home Assistant does this and I never connected HA to the printer. It’s just part of the status information the printer seems to make available on the network.

It’s not surprising to me that Amazon would do this using one of their devices, as everyone seems to be grabbing as much data as they can. It’s probably described in the T&Cs somewhere (that they can scan your network and use data from it).

This reddit post from 3 years ago suggests that Amazon is using SNMP to monitor your local network printers.

Put your Amazon devices in an isolated "IOT" network if possible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ip5i1c/alexa_no...

I've recently changed my home network to ensure all IoT devices are on their own VLAN where they can't talk to each-other and only have access to the internet.

I see my paranoia was not unwarranted.

That being said, if I had a network printer, I would've connected it to yet another VLAN I have set up which does not even have access to the internet.

Setting all this up required quite a bit of time, effort and networking/firewall knowledge. I wonder if there's a market for providing such capabilities out of the box for the less tech-inclined privacy-conscious consumers.

The feature seems perfectly fine for those who want it, but the idea that you never opted in is troubling.

So the question is, how did your printer get linked to your Amazon account?

Possibilities:

1) You registered your printer with Brother (possibly when setting up wireless or cloud services) and put in your email address which is also the one associated with Amazon. Did you opt in without realizing (via a dark pattern? hidden in TOS?)? Or did they opt you in without any consent at all?

2) You bought the printer from Amazon and they already knew the printer serial number (common with certain electronics brands) and that's how it got associated. Perhaps there's a notice on the add-to-cart or checkout page that you'll be enrolled, or an opt-in checkbox? Or maybe it is without consent?

I get an error on https://drs-web.amazon.com/settings – has it been taken down? I also have a Brother printer, which I bought from Amazon.

How has it linked with your Amazon account then? Just because you bought the printer from Amazon? (As they do with their own devices, e.g. Fire TV Sticks, of course.)

This is deeply disturbing.

If you cared about privacy you won’t have an Alexa device in your house.

What model printer?

You backdoored your own network by putting an Alexa on it. I wouldn't be surprised if Ring cameras pulled the same shit.

If you really must have this trash on your lan, you have to isolate it at the network level.

Amazon does the same thing if you link a Samsung Smartthings hub and those little sensors have a low battery.

This is basically the 'promise' of all this smart home junk: your fridge automatically adds milk to your Amazon cart when it scans the contents and sees the level is low. A dubious convenience for users, but an excellent way for companies to ensure you keep buying things from them.

Related is that Alexa seems to like to add any HP printers nearby with WiFi direct still on, and relentlessly remind you when the neighbor's printer ink is low. I have ~20 random printers in my Alexa account that I don't own and keep reappearing whenever Alexa scans for new devices.

People realizing shit in their homes has an API because smart devices started poking it will never not be funny.

I have an HP multi-function laster printer and got a similar message yesterday about my black toner running low. Got the same email with the same useless instructions to opt-out. I have and would never opt-into this feature.

I have a feeling this is alexa searching your network and helping itself to your devices.

This kind of thing is precisely why I won't touch IoT things with a ten foot pole. You don't know what they're doing. Scanning my network and interacting with other machines on my network without my overt permission is way over the line.

It's also not worth it to me to isolate them on my network. It's easier to only allow devices that I have control over.

These devices cannot be trusted.

Does anyone know if setting the printer admin password will disallow querying of the ink level by other network devices?

>Protect your Brother machine against unauthorised access over the network

https://support.brother.com/g/b/faqend.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&...