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Re:Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You (... by schoen on Wednesday October 21, 2015 @04:51AM (#10424323)
The tracking mechanisms are often disclosed in product documentation, though maybe not by all manufacturers.

These are a great example of what Benjamin Mako Hill has called "antifeatures".

http://wiki.mako.cc/Antifeatures

(The original definition is "functionality that a technology developer will charge users to not include", but that might suggest that a product version without the antifeature is always available, which is not necessarily true, especially for DRM and surveillance-related antifeatures. A more general definition might be a product feature that required a deliberate effort on the manufacturer's part to include and that users view as decreasing the product's value.)

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