This teen's cruel prank on a neighbour got him a "free" printer

Beware the unsecured wireless printer; that’s the lesson learned after US teen Blake Messick messed with his unsuspecting neighbour.

While “printing out some memes” one day, 18-year-old Messick noticed that his neighbour’s wireless printer was unsecured, meaning he could send something to print on it.

“Hello,” he wrote on a new document. “I am your printer. I have become self aware. Run.”

He took a screengrab, sent the document to print, chuckled to himself (no doubt) and went on his merry way, expecting that to be the end of it.

But the next day, Messick noticed something out on the curb with one of his neighbours’ bins.

A printer. Was it the very same printer he had messed with the day before? There was no way to be sure but Messick told Buzzfeed that “it would be a scary coincidence if it wasn’t”.

“It’s possible that he threw it out for just thinking it was faulty, or maybe he didn’t know how to turn off the Bluetooth,” he said.

Not one to let a perfectly good printer go to waste, Messick took the abandoned appliance in and, of course, tweeted about it:

“And that’s the story of how I got a free printer,” he wrote.

Is he going to keep the printer, which he got through – let’s face it – pretty nefarious means? “Probably” not, he says.

“I’ll probably just return it once all of this blows over,” he said. “I’m sure my neighbour will have a laugh about it once he sees what a sensation it’s become.”

Hmm, yes. We’re sure.