Not you too Bro?

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Remember when I said be careful about printer firmware updates? For years, Brother was the go-to brand that many in the small biz tech industry would
[See the full post at: Not you too Bro?]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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jburk07, Patricia Grace, Great Lake Bunyip

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Now, Brother denies it’s them..

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/printers/brother-denies-firmware-blocks-third-party-toner-and-ink-use

..The printer firm’s interesting reply was that its devices may sometimes “perform a Brother [G]enuine check when troubleshooting.” It admits that such troubleshooting processes may request Brother Genuine supplies..

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But it sounds like that’s not been changed via firmware rather the printer was shipped like that.

I have a friend who sells cartridges and he indicated that in the last several years cheap chips on those cartridges have meant that some work and some do not.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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ve2mrx, jburk07, Patricia Grace

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Brother Printer firmware update is a DRM check, not a print yield update
.

I updated the firmware on my Brother HL-L2395DW printer, and my toner cart is no longer working. Turns out that this urgent update for security and toner yield is a DRM scheme to disable third party toner carts.

I just printed out the device settings prior to doing the firmware update, and Brother support verified that they’ll no longer work with non-brother toner…

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A 23 day old Reddit post is always definitive evidence in my book! 

cheers, Paul

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satrow

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Susan,

I’ve found this to be true. What I do is just replace the chip with the one from the cartridge I’m replacing and all is well.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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wavy, jburk07, Cybertooth, satrow

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Those of us who have photography printers are locked into the companies own print cartridges.  A full set of ink for my Canon Pro1000 costs $687.

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wavy

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Great info here  https://defensivecomputingchecklist.com/printers.php

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Michael432, Rick Corbett, SueW, mbhelwig, RetiredGeek

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“That’s Mom, to you”

Too bad, Brother is a brand I had gone out of my way to buy in the past,  simply to avoid the ink shenanigans.

I print so little these days, it’s hardly worth my time/ interest to hack the firmware.

 

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Paul T wrote:

A 23 day old Reddit post is always definitive evidence in my book!

You mean to suggest the Brother has started blocking 3rd party toners just a week ago ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1j42fb4/so_now_that_brother_has_decided_that_hp_is_the/

4 days ago

Brother is pushing firmware updates to their laser printers to deliberately degrade print quality when 3rd party toners are used. On color lasers, using 3rd party toner causes color calibration to be disabled. They have also removed old firmware versions from their website, preventing downgrades to older code.

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Brother has denied the claims as documented at Ars Technica on March 5

Brother denies using firmware updates to brick printers with third-party ink

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/

 

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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wavy

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Michael432 wrote:

Brother has denied

..but users claim otherwise.

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And you have to chose who to believe. In this case, it seems like an obviously easy choice, at least to me.

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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wavy

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In fact, they have not denied but confirmed. With a carefully crafter legal blurb, they only admit crippling the functionality in some cases.

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Please provide evidence to backup your claim.

cheers, Paul

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