As many users have discovered, HP made a change to the HP Smart multifunction printer utility in 2020 that means – all of sudden and with no option to decline, you need to create a HP.com account and sign in with it on the app to be able to scan using your own scanner. You know, the you one you own and bought with your money and are using with your computer.
The first thing that occured to me when I saw this is surely this contravenes GDPR? An email address is definately considered Personnally Identifiable Information (PII) under GDPR and given that the app worked fine without it, HP have no legitimate need or justification for forcing you to give it to them.
There is also no option to continue using HP Smart without it and given that many customers will have bought the printer for the simple ease-of-use provided by that app, they are now being extorted to give up their info.
It gets worse
Not only is there a data protection concern here, if for any reason you don’t have internet access, the app doesn’t work then either!!
You literally cannot use the network based scanner with the HP Smart app that you paid good money for unless you have an Internet connection.
What the hell?!
For me, this is a real problem because to make matters worse, HP Smart seems “shit” when it comes to detecting one, I am currently connected via a VPN and the app is insisting that I am offline, stating:
Connect to the Internet
Connect to the Internet and sign in to your HP account to access all your available app features. Connect this computer to the Internet using Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
After connecting to your network, select Continue.
