<story><title>Ask HN: Brother printers sending ink data to Amazon?</title><text>A most unusual thing. Every once in a while I get an email from Amazon that it&amp;#x27;s time to re-order Brother ink. I always delete these because I rarely print, but also figure it&amp;#x27;s just Amazon reminding me to buy something.&lt;p&gt;Today I decided to opt out&amp;#x2F;unsubscribe once and for all. Instead I see this at the bottom of the email:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Click here to view or manage settings, including the option to opt out if you are already using another replenishment service.&lt;p&gt;This took me to https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drs-web.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;settings&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The data shown is based on estimated consumption reported by smart devices and orders you place through Amazon.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Here it had a link to &amp;quot;Consumption history&amp;quot; which upon clicking showed me the ink levels of my Brother printer for the past &lt;i&gt;two weeks&lt;/i&gt;. Date and time.&lt;p&gt;WTF?! It is not apparent that I can disable this function. Can anyone else duplicate?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Update&lt;/i&gt; : This is part of Alexa it seems, and folded in to the Dash replenishment protocol; note I have never had a Dash button.&lt;p&gt;Amazon&amp;#x27;s instructions for this were not very helpful.&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;gp&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;customer&amp;#x2F;display.html?nodeId=201357520&lt;p&gt;Some digging revealed a Brother help document:&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;help.brother-usa.com&amp;#x2F;app&amp;#x2F;answers&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;a_id&amp;#x2F;172810&amp;#x2F;~&amp;#x2F;cancel-enrollment-%28amazon-smart-reorders%29&lt;p&gt;This bothers me quite a lot. I never authorized, opted in, or gave either device permission to connect, let alone Amazon to monitor and nag me about it!&lt;p&gt;Model: Brother MFC-J485DW&lt;p&gt;Purchased from: Best Buy, an American retailer, after July of 2019.&lt;p&gt;Firmware: N1901041316</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>orev</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;amp;Cs somewhere (that they can scan your network and use data from it).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kxrm</author><text>This is why IoT devices on my network get their own subnet and they are blocked from communicating with anything but what I allow them to communicate with, including the Internet.&lt;p&gt;Also I want to make it clear, it shouldn&amp;#x27;t have to be this way.  Devices should be transparent about how they function, but sadly they are not.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Brother printers sending ink data to Amazon?</title><text>A most unusual thing. Every once in a while I get an email from Amazon that it&amp;#x27;s time to re-order Brother ink. I always delete these because I rarely print, but also figure it&amp;#x27;s just Amazon reminding me to buy something.&lt;p&gt;Today I decided to opt out&amp;#x2F;unsubscribe once and for all. Instead I see this at the bottom of the email:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Click here to view or manage settings, including the option to opt out if you are already using another replenishment service.&lt;p&gt;This took me to https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drs-web.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;settings&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The data shown is based on estimated consumption reported by smart devices and orders you place through Amazon.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Here it had a link to &amp;quot;Consumption history&amp;quot; which upon clicking showed me the ink levels of my Brother printer for the past &lt;i&gt;two weeks&lt;/i&gt;. Date and time.&lt;p&gt;WTF?! It is not apparent that I can disable this function. Can anyone else duplicate?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Update&lt;/i&gt; : This is part of Alexa it seems, and folded in to the Dash replenishment protocol; note I have never had a Dash button.&lt;p&gt;Amazon&amp;#x27;s instructions for this were not very helpful.&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;gp&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;customer&amp;#x2F;display.html?nodeId=201357520&lt;p&gt;Some digging revealed a Brother help document:&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;help.brother-usa.com&amp;#x2F;app&amp;#x2F;answers&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;a_id&amp;#x2F;172810&amp;#x2F;~&amp;#x2F;cancel-enrollment-%28amazon-smart-reorders%29&lt;p&gt;This bothers me quite a lot. I never authorized, opted in, or gave either device permission to connect, let alone Amazon to monitor and nag me about it!&lt;p&gt;Model: Brother MFC-J485DW&lt;p&gt;Purchased from: Best Buy, an American retailer, after July of 2019.&lt;p&gt;Firmware: N1901041316</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>orev</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;amp;Cs somewhere (that they can scan your network and use data from it).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ajay-p</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It’s probably described in the T&amp;amp;Cs somewhere&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which.. I never read but I concur with your theory.</text></comment>