Ask HN: Brother printers sending ink data to Amazon?

157 points

3 years ago

A most unusual thing. Every once in a while I get an email from Amazon that it's time to re-order Brother ink. I always delete these because I rarely print, but also figure it's just Amazon reminding me to buy something.

Today I decided to opt out/unsubscribe once and for all. Instead I see this at the bottom of the email:

"Click here to view or manage settings, including the option to opt out if you are already using another replenishment service.

This took me to https://drs-web.amazon.com/settings

"The data shown is based on estimated consumption reported by smart devices and orders you place through Amazon."

Here it had a link to "Consumption history" which upon clicking showed me the ink levels of my Brother printer for the past two weeks. Date and time.

WTF?! It is not apparent that I can disable this function. Can anyone else duplicate?

Update : This is part of Alexa it seems, and folded in to the Dash replenishment protocol; note I have never had a Dash button.

Amazon's instructions for this were not very helpful.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201357520

Some digging revealed a Brother help document:

https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/172810/~/cancel-enrollment-%28amazon-smart-reorders%29

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!