Canon printers may keep your Wi-Fi info even after a reset

What’s the first thing you do when selling or recycling a gadget? Reset your data, of course — nobody wants their personal info getting into someone else’s hands. But a standard reset isn’t enough for some Canon printers, apparently. In a recent support post, the company told owners that the standard data reset function doesn’t actually get rid of all the printer’s stored data, notably leaving your local Wi-Fi SSD and password intact if you’ve set them up. Hundreds of models are affected in the E, G, iB, M, T, X, and Pro series of consumer and commercial printers.

“Sensitive information on the Wi-Fi connection settings…may not be deleted by the usual initialization process,” Canon warns in a short post (spotted by Ars Technica). Users are instructed to use the “Reset all” function in the Settings menu, then turn on the Wi-Fi connection, then go back into the reset sub-menu and clear it again. The process is slightly different on some models — if there’s no dedicated software reset menu, clear the LAN settings, turn on Wi-Fi, then clear the LAN settings again.

Based on the somewhat roundabout way of solving this issue, it looks like a software bug rather than an intentional retention of user data. That’s something that Canon might be able to fix with a firmware update over Wi-Fi, since, you know, the printer’s already connected to the local network.) Just so long as it doesn’t brick them, like a recent HP firmware update did.