A print job usually includes metadata that contains the respective user ID, date, time, and the name of the print job. This data is displayed on the control panel and web server of many printers and all-in-one devices. The name of the print job is often derived from the name of the digital document in question. If a printer has an integrated web server, confidential processes can often be viewed via a browser. The metadata on print servers is also visible in plain text unless it is anonymised. This could allow third parties to obtain confidential information. Many devices also allow print jobs to be saved so that they can be printed out later after authentication with a PIN. This is another case in which the name of all available documents is displayed on the control panel of an output device.

Some printers and copiers print “yellow dots” (also referred to as machine identification code, tracking dots, or secret dots) on paper. These often undocumented watermarks, which may include the date, time, and the serial number of the printer, are hardly visible to the naked eye. In this way, a printout can be directly associated with an organisation or a specific user and thus traced back to the author. In addition to the consequences regarding data protection laws, information might accidentally leave an organisation in this way.

Fax logs can also be printed without access protection on many all-in-one devices. Even if they only list telephone numbers, dates, times and numbers of pages, they make it possible to draw conclusions about personal data or business transactions.