Owners Beware: Lexmark Printer Driver Installs Spyware - Shame On You Lexmark

I got a free Lexmark printer in summer 2006 and used it for almost a year to supplement my CAE account's quota of 300 printing pages per semester. Now a folder which I believe was created by Lexmark printer driver installation is still in my C:\Program Files folder. I am going to just delete the folder and I went to Google this folder's name to see if it is in fact Lexmark's ugly work. To my surprise, Lexmark installs spyware in our computers when we install their printer drivers. The Internet Patrol reported this and I found a few more forum postings which describe the same case.

I have already uninstalled my Lexmark printer and the folder leftover is named Lx_cats. Inside the Lx_cats folder is a lxcgCATS.ini file (another variation is Lx_CATS.ini). After I opened up this file with Notepad, I found that the spyware is programmed to report back to a URL https://www.lxkcc1.com/ which is (or was?) owned by Lexmark. It reports the printer usage data to Lexmark every 30 days and it actually transmits the serial number of the printer too. Therefore, if you have registered your Lexmark product with Lexmark's product registration system, they can actually obtain your personal information based on the serial number. Now that is spyware-like activity. Shame on you Lexmark!

Below is the content of the lxcgCATS.ini file found in my computer:
[CATS Control]
CATSParticipation=0
ArchiveCount=2
FirstSurveyDays=60
NextSurveyDays=180
NextArchiveDays=30
NextAIOFetch=0
NextUpload=30
NumRetries=5
TimeoutSecs=20
UploadURL=https://www.lxkcc1.com
MaxMsgSizeKb=600
UserName=b2btest
Password=b2btest
UploadINI=0
DeleteStatus=1
[CATS Scratch]
InstallDate=2454223
LastSurvey=2454223
LastArchive=2454223
LastAIOFetch=2454223
LastUpload=2454223
LastUploadError=0
LastConnectError=0
GUID=d06e2297-6328-434d-acd7-A747D70794EB
[Serial Number]
Serial=19M01850200117Y

Edit: Upon further checking, I found more lx files in my C:\ namely lxcg.log, lxcgfire.csv, lxcgunst.csv, lxcgunst.001, lxcgunst.000, lxcginst.csv . I have proceeded to delete those as well since I no longer own a Lexmark printer.