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[–] lanre 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Here's my opinion: Not sure on printers, but computers purchases are linked to whatever credit card/name bought them, so it stands to reason that printers would be as well. Thus printer X prints yellow dots identifying itself as printer x, and then the feds ask the electronics dealer who sold that printer for their sales records and then go track down the buyer. So it'd probably go like this: fed identify it as a lexmark printer, serial # X. They go to lexmark, get their sales records, and find out it was sold in the New York City area to Y Electronics store. So they go to Y Electronics and ask for customer sales records for that printer model, and then hopefully they can link the serial # to a name. And then work from there. If not, they can investigate each of the customers (maybe dozens or a few hundred at most) depending on how serious the crime/situation is.

Here's how the government tracked down Reality Winner, who's the most recent example I can think of of someone being caught by the little yellow dots.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170606/11210737530/how-document-tracking-dots-helped-fbi-track-down-russian-hacking-doc-leaker.shtml