Opinion: Chinese New Built Clone Toners are the Prime Enemy, but HP is Not Far Behind Them.

[toner]

Only six months after the Voluntary Agreement (VA) was turned down all members of EuroVAPrint (https://www.eurovaprint.eu/) who have been the most active in the VA process have launched proprietary subscription models that lock in the end-user into the exclusive use of original cartridges.
By Kappius Volker.

HP is even going so far as to offer a program called HP+ under which the office imaging equipment will only work with original HP cartridges for the lifetime of the device. That means the user can only throw away the device if she chooses to no longer use original cartridges.

In order to better understand how delicate the issue is in regards to Data Protection/GDPR is, please let me briefly list what information so called data collection agents (DCA) can gather when connected to a computer, a network and the internet by way of example how it works with HP+:

During the installation process of a HP+ printer, drivers and a data collection agent must be installed on the user’s PC/Notebook that collects data not only from the printer, but surprisingly also from the PC/Notebook and the entire network on which it is installed.

The DCA opens a communication path between HP and the user’s internal network so that HP can perform actions such as:

– blocking and unblocking HP printers remotely.

– sending messages to the printers so that they appear on the computer screen.

– identification of whether or not the cartridge installed is an original cartridge.

– supply and device status.

– capturing the type of printed document. (e.g. .xls, .doc, .pdf, etc.)

– capturing data from the PC containing the agent, including the identification (computer name) as well as the private IP on the internal and public network

– geolocation through the public IP.

– inventory of the network, in particular other available print-output devices and their respective statuses regardless of the manufacturer.

– the data transferred for the reading of a single monochrome machine is more than 160000 characters – etc.

In addition, HP is asking their channel partners to enter into their Amplify program (https://www.hp.com/us-en/solutions/hp-amplify-partner-program.html) under which they are obliged to share Customer and device data in order to get a channel discount.

Here is an example of what Data HP is making their Amplify Partners share:
HP stated on a channel partner event in the US that 99% of their channel partners have signed up for the Amplify program and that 98% of them share data with HP. This way HP gets 80 billion data points per week from their Amplify partners.

HP and Chinese Lexmark are leading the pack of OEMs that want to block ALL third party cartridges – no matter if they are Chinese copycat NBC or genuine reman cartridges.  They want to raw material recycle their cartridges in order to avoid them being valuable cores for remanufacturing. But actually MOST of the OEM collected cartridges still end up in incineration and landfill!!! This is not in line with state of the art environmental approaches that clearly show that the preparation for re-use (remanufacturing, repair, refurbishment) is to be preferred over raw material recycling and incineration (energy recovery).

 

[Author]

October 12, 2022 at 2:35 PM