ALBAWABA – Earlier this month, HP faced a new lawsuit that argues against its policies regarding printers’ cartridges and firmware updates; it comes after HP forced updates on its users that would make the printers they own lose functionality if used with an unofficial third-party cartridge, referring to HP’s Dynamic Security feature, the lawsuit filed with US District Attorney calls for $5 million in damages to customers as well as a Jury Trial.
HP has gone under scrutiny for pushing such updates in a parallel time with a strategic price to its cartridges, which the lawsuit describes as a monopoly that the company made to force competitors out, with CFO Marie Myers supporting these decisions, saying that locking customers out of their printers would force them to HP’s monthly ink subscription program, which she calls a “long-term relationship”, thus increasing the customer’s value by up to 20 percent.
The tech giant’s CEO, Enrique Lores, went on CNBC last Thursday to defend the company’s tactics, explaining how a customer that is not willing to re-purchase their ink or print enough is considered a ‘bad investment’, moving on to add that non-HP branded cartridges pose a security risk for users after the company assigned researchers from Bugcrowd, a renowned cybersecurity company that works with finding vulnerabilities in tech products and software, which was able to use a custom-made cartridge to infiltrate the printer and by HP’s claims, the connected computer.
.@HP is facing a class action lawsuit on printers being disabled after third-party ink replacement.
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 18, 2024
"For us, it's important to protect our IP," says @HP CEO @EnriqueJLores: pic.twitter.com/10dkCUtu5J
Dan Goodin, Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, has gone on Mastodon to get more insight from experts in Cybersecurity, with many of them criticizing HP’s claims, with Steve Belloving, professor of computer science, explaining how this might be a concern only if it’s a “nation-state tailored attack” rather than a worry for the average consumer, with another user commenting on how HP added a microcontroller to make the cartridges hard to counterfeit but later having these microcontrollers pose a security threat to its printers.
HP is also fighting a separate class-action lawsuit that started in Aug. 2023, after the company locked users out of the scanners bundled with printers if the printer is low or out of ink, causing frustration among customers who try to use a device they own in a functionality that does not even require ink, Northern District of California judge ruled against HP’s dismissal motion of the case.
