I’ve got a wifi direct HP printer…just turned it on and its printed a mysterious message…

It says;

greetings (my nickname)

Then a link to http://www.tpcus.com and a long string afterwards

Warm Regards

My fullname inc surname

Now the greeting and regards message isn’t a term I’d normally use, and first part of the domain doesn’t go anywhere, although I haven’t tried the full string, I suppose that could lead somewhere. As its printed, you’d have to type in and its quite long winded.

Should I be worried, and how do I find out if my printer has been voting for Donald Trump, or is on primed to partake in a DoS attack against cyclingweekly?!

I don’t know why the printer would turn on me like this, I treated it to a full set of ink cartridges last week so I could print some Collect+ labels 🙁

The next big internet killer is “Internet of Things” viruses, taking over all manner of insecure devices from thermostats to printers and turning them into a huge botnet.

HP have form here.

Tens of millions of HP LaserJet printers vulnerable to remote hacking

Hmmm…old article but I wonder if HP sorted themselves out. My printer is probably 2015, a Photosmart 5520. I just turned it on again and no new message this time!

Isn’t that just a junk email? I suspect your printer has an email address that will print anything sent to it. It’s a shame the spammers have it though.

If you don’t use it, you ought to be able to disable this functionality.

Seems to be a known problem – Google “hp printer spam”

Hmm. I’ve just bought an HP printer with this functionality. Worried now.

OK, looks like you can just turn off the feature, or restrict the email addresses it will accept jobs from.

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