How to hide a network printer
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@JasGot said in How to hide a network printer:
Is there an easy way to prevent people from seeing a networked printer? If I setup a new printer on the network for three people to use, it doesn't take long before other user the Add Printer wizard in Windows 10 and are printing to it.
Is there a quick way to stop this?
Take their permission to add printers away..
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Only serve them through group policy
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@JasGot said in How to hide a network printer:
Is there an easy way to prevent people from seeing a networked printer?
I would suggest a hat and sunglasses...
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Seriously though, can you turn on accounting?
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Are you installing them as shared? If not they would have to know the IP or a hostname or something like that. I install ours as unshared, never had that happen.
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@jmoore said in How to hide a network printer:
Are you installing them as shared? If not they would have to know the IP or a hostname or something like that. I install ours as unshared, never had that happen.
These printers are available for install in Windows 10 and they are not shared by any workstation or server. They are simply printers with NIC card set for dhcp. Take them out of the box, plug in an ethernet cable, power them on and Windows 10 can see them and print to them.
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The printers are broadcasting, or otherwise making their presence known. You need to look at the printer itself and see if you can turn it off.
Now that said, many printers don't have local users/permissions - so once someone finds the IP to the device, they can still add it manually.
To answer the OP - If there are no users/passwords to allow printing on the printer, then no, there is no real way you can prevent people from printing to it, assuming they have the ability to install a compatible driver.
Removing admin rights and also removing the user's ability to install printers (group or local policy)
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Some printers have ip filtering built in. Brother printers have this feature.
https://support.brother.com/g/b/sp/faqend.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2370dw_us&faqid=faq00100265_000
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Can you provide the printer model?
Some printers comes with a firewall, ip/Mac filter, allows to control protocols like the infamous WSD. -
@Dashrender said in How to hide a network printer:
The printers are broadcasting, or otherwise making their presence known. You need to look at the printer itself and see if you can turn it off.
Now that said, many printers don't have local users/permissions - so once someone finds the IP to the device, they can still add it manually.
To answer the OP - If there are no users/passwords to allow printing on the printer, then no, there is no real way you can prevent people from printing to it, assuming they have the ability to install a compatible driver.
Removing admin rights and also removing the user's ability to install printers (group or local policy)
Yeah I'm not sure how his is setup differently than ours but it must be. The only way for a user here to install another printer would be knowing its IP address, and they dont. Theres no broadcasting that I can tell so maybe thats the issue to look at. I don't do anything with AD either, so my printers are just out of box. I set their IP to what I want it as and assign user to it that I want. I don't use dhcp.
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@syko24 said in How to hide a network printer:
Some printers have ip filtering built in. Brother printers have this feature.
https://support.brother.com/g/b/sp/faqend.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2370dw_us&faqid=faq00100265_000
Sweet! Canon has this too. Thanks!
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@jmoore said in How to hide a network printer:
@Dashrender said in How to hide a network printer:
The printers are broadcasting, or otherwise making their presence known. You need to look at the printer itself and see if you can turn it off.
Now that said, many printers don't have local users/permissions - so once someone finds the IP to the device, they can still add it manually.
To answer the OP - If there are no users/passwords to allow printing on the printer, then no, there is no real way you can prevent people from printing to it, assuming they have the ability to install a compatible driver.
Removing admin rights and also removing the user's ability to install printers (group or local policy)
Yeah I'm not sure how his is setup differently than ours but it must be. The only way for a user here to install another printer would be knowing its IP address, and they dont. Theres no broadcasting that I can tell so maybe thats the issue to look at. I don't do anything with AD either, so my printers are just out of box. I set their IP to what I want it as and assign user to it that I want. I don't use dhcp.
You could test taking a non domain joined computer and see if it will "find" printers on your network.
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@jmoore said in How to hide a network printer:
I don't use dhcp.
I didn't used to either, but I do now. I use DHCP reservations for devices like these. Makes updating them later if a network change ever happens a snap.
