Zap when touching USB cable

B

burgerman

Geek Trainee
Today I had to return a pc to somebody and noticed that everytime i touched the metal part (the part that plugs into the pc) of his USB printer cable that i would get small shocks from it. I didn't end up plugging it in and was worried that doing so might have had negative effects on his system

Is this a bad thing, sign of faulty printer, dangerous or completely normal? I assume the printer was switched on at the time but haven't had these microshocks happen often like that
 
USB is only 5 Volts (and 0.5 amps, 2.5 Watts max) so this shouldn't happen... i would guess its static or the USB sheilding is connected to something it shouldn't be!

(in other words, this is NOT normal)
 
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