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Comment by 300bps | Hacker News Reader

>Print the addresses (be careful here - printers sometimes put identifying marks - get the most common one)

Printer steganography is usually limited to color laser printers and high-end inkjets. Buying a common one unfortunately won't help you. Included in the codes that have been cracked is the serial number of the printer as well as a date and time stamp of the printout.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography

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Couldn't you just buy a cheap printer with cash, use it, and then dump it as well, perhaps leave it in a charity bin somewhere.

Printers are pretty cheap these days, and it seems that in order for any of the markings to be useful they would have to find the printer in question in your possession/prove it was your printer.

or buy a crappy one from goodwill or a pawn shop, pawn shop might have cameras goodwill probably not

An old dot-matrix or label / thermal receipt printer will do. Buy it at a Flea Market / yard Sale / hamfest / craigslist. Make sure you get a ribbon with it ;)

they will catch you trying to get a dot-matrix printer working

The more purchases they can tie to the event, the more information they have and the more chances to track you down. You can slip up at any point- for example, say you buy the printer at Best Buy, and they figure out based on the S/N which Best Buy and what day the sale was made. You can't turn off security cameras in Best Buy.

The fewer transactions, the better.

Why not just use Kinko's?

Cut the letters out of a common magazine or newspaper then.

Just write with a thick generic pen using your non-dominant hand.

Use a letter stencil? One of those plastic stencils.

That should do it too, you can even make it yourself with a piece of cardboard and a sharp knife.

Probably take fingerprints of someone on the envelope too? Randomize it and complicate it so much that the idea of finding you dies the most desperate death.

Ha ha, the situation feels 'arrived' at fictional level already!

Cut the common letters out of a newspaper or magazine.

Or typewriter.

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