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- Опубліковано 29 лис 2015
- Did you know that your colour laser printer is secretly printing a forensic code on every one of your printouts so the government can track it?
Sounds like a nutjob conspiracy theory, but it's true!
Yellow dots that are invisible to the naked eye are printed all over your page that have the printer serial number and time and date encoded within them.
List of printers that do/don't have this forensic encoding
www.eff.org/pages/list-printe...
www.eff.org/issues/printers
seeingyellow.com/
It may even violate human rights:
www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02...
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These things are just creepy. I live in Romania. My mother used to write for the western media (covertly). Back then in the 1980s, during communism, owning a typewriter was almost a crime. You had to register it, get it "fingerprinted" (each letter on each typewriter has it's quirks) so they can track you down in case you've typed something against the system. Now as properly trained westerners, nobody will dispute me on how bad Stalinist Communism was. In fact, I might get a few reflexive up-votes. But if I were to say privacy is important, there is the pseudo-skeptic "please fuck me plenty" type of person who will say I am a conspiracy theorist, a quack, that if you're honest, then you have nothing to hide (like the Google CEO asshole). To which I can reply "please post your email address and your password publicly so we can all read your private stuff". Privacy is an important principle and the lack thereof will make people more obedient and less likely to speak their minds when it matters. Nobody is interested in the pictures you took of your naughty bits. But doesn't it bother you that they are stored somewhere on a server without your consent(if you sync your phone to Google or Apple)? Does it not bother you that a private government contractor has the ability to look at them at will? And lest you think _this can't happen to us, we're a democracy" bla bla bla, guess what? It already did. There is more wiretapping, more spying, more propaganda and far more effective today then it was back in Stalinist Russia.
👍
You ARE NOT a nut case. And, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Gotta love the love !!
@Max Raider Stallman is right!
Yeah, apparently there are commie forces here in America, trying to achieve the same goal. But they are doomed to fail!!!!!!!!
Communism death toll is 100M and counting
that's why i still write my random notes using newspaper cutouts.
+jlebrech The imperfections on the edge of every pair of scissors leave a traceable signature. I hope you didn't pay for them with a credit card.
+jlebrech i see what you did there
+Theo de Raadt ....b/c having a 'home-forged' pair of scissors in 2015 isn't suspicious at all. ;-)
+Theo de Raadt Land of the fee and home of the slave...
+Theo de Raadt Nice try, all Blacksmithing hammers have microscopic grooves that leave a signature on anything you forge!
So THAT's why my printer refuses to let me print a black and white page without replacing the color first!
do a video on why you can't scan money using colour scanners. And how Photoshop will refuse to open images of money. It's quite interesting.
+James Grimwood Modern money bills have a similar dot system as presented in the video. Scanner firmware is made to recognise this dot system and, if found, will automatically refuse to do anything with it. But I agree I'd like to see a video about that too.
+James Grimwood I'll have to try that myself.
+James Grimwood Funny thing is, in some hp PSC this detection was purely in software. You could put a bill on the flatbed and do a on-device copy without problems. But as soon as you tried to scan it using the Windows driver, it aborted after detecting the Eurion constellation.
+James Grimwood I agree. Have never tried it and never will probably but would be fun to see the pathetic bullshit.
Just photocopied a 50€ bill on an HP printer. It just copied it. No error, no changes in the copy.
For the dots, yes I know that the printer actually put them. I read about the whole thing some time ago. Interestingly the dots on my special printer are only put beside black corners, nowhere else.
Definitely redefines the claims of photographic quality in color prints, since those artifacts are there no matter how you set it up or what you print. A real eye opener Dave!
+Fran Blanche Also explains why they run out of yellow first.
+Fran Blanche You would actually have grounds to return the printer under consumer law for false advertising.
I would think so - and true too that the yellow seems to deplete fastest of the colors. They do get their fingers in everything, do they not!
+Fran Blanche If you complain, they're going to ask you to show a legal definition of what constitutes "Photographic Quality". Even the best film has inconsistencies in the particles that give it "grain", and digital cameras have various noise sources affecting the image consistency. I don't think you're going to get very far with that complaint.
What a waste of toner. Billions of pages are being printed each day, literally tonnes and tonnes of yellow toner down the drain.
It is like Uncle Sam pissed on all your documents
Blame the leftist assclowns!!!
I'll have to go back to using my old manual typewriter with the misaligned letter t. They'll never be able to trace that......
+Dave Curran inb4
+TripingPC Just a pen and paper and ask artists to reproduce your images for you.
+Dave Curran lol
+TripingPC i would use a "john bull printing kit" that would confuse them!
The question I have: has a single crime ever been solved using these traces? If not, why in the name of all that is holy am I paying extra (in ink costs) to print yellow dots that are useless?
+GothAlice Probably not. Just like the TSA crap at airports has not caught anyone.
+GothAlice You should sue the US gov't for your toner money back
+Alex Tol, van bruce schneier wants his catch phrase back
+GothAlice Well I actually saw this in an american detective show, don't know wich one. But they used it in that case.
+Nick Haakman - And on NCIS they used a "cold boot" attack against a SIM card. Let's give that a chance to sink in. An attack against RAM. On a chunk of flash memory. Television reality does not make.
+Henry Tittywinker - For real. So far no evidence has been supplied that it has, and that includes your allegory about "enemies of the state". I'd say [citation needed], but I have a low expectations for UA-cam comment threads.
so this is why my yellow ink is always running out prematurely
more tinfoil hat related content please
content your butt, dumbass, heheheh
+cornholio223 TINfoil? this foil dont incude TIN!
Its alufoil!
+Arek R. Battery is incorrect word too for single cell, but people use it. ;)
+Tanku 666 yea same with charger for phone which is just power supply.
Or drone when its just toy ar at least eq. quadcopter...
+Theo de Raadt It may even be true the vPro line of chips can use a 3D connection in conjunction with other support chips, but I'm 99.9% sure it won't actually be built into the CPU itself.
Even if it were, it would be incredibly easy to detect if it was transmitting at any point, and it would require some sort of antenna to the outside world as well (unless it worked via the usual WiFi antenna, which won't exactly be best tuned for mobile frequencies).
www.techeye.net/chips/intel-responds-to-always-on-3g-processor-conspiracy
well thanks for feeding my paranoia.... :P
+Rinoa Super-Genius Forget the tin foil hat though, it only holds in the steam to double the brain bake.
+Rinoa Super-Genius don't click my google plus posts
Great video! Now that I think about it, I have seen these dots before. We were all warned about this spying decades ago. This video will get lots of views! :-) The next step is to learn how to turn off the pattern, even better, don't send in the warranty card and pay cash for the printer.
The thing is, do retailers actually track which serial numbered printer went to which person? I could buy one at the mall tomorrow and no one would know I own it. Or just buy used. I guess microdots only work if they catch you with the printer.
+Gadget Addict the point is, you print a ransom note or terrorist threat letter, post it, police track it back to you somehow and you would say "I never printed that, prove it!" so they take your printer, compare the print outs and they got you. It's just aiding investigation, it's not supposed to link your personal information to your printer forever for authorities to look up. Kind of like Fingerprints, if you leave fingerprints at a crime scene, police can have your fingerprints, but you aren't on record, so they only can match the prints to you if they for some reason take your fingerprints and put your personal information to the fingerprint data.
+Cooking With Cows So it doesn't help the police find you, but it helps to potentially incriminate you. Except you could just as easily say you bought the printer from someone on the street 2 days ago. Aside from the fact that you could just use an inkjet printer to avoid this, the whole idea of this actually being useful seems a bit farfetched.
+Gadget Addict That mall has security cameras, and the manufacturer/dealer knows which serial number unit when to which store...
EEVblog That's a fair point. Although there's plenty of places to buy printers where that wouldn't be an issue. And honestly, even in that case, how long do they keep the CCTV for?
+Gadget Addict Laser Printers are usually fairly expensive, and people don't fret to register them for a warranty.
I vaguely remember the EFF campaigning against this encoding when it was first proposed. Looks like they didn't win.
+Mark Henderson Uuh never mind, lol I should have finished watching the rest of the video
THAT'S WHERE MY YELLOW INK KEEPS GOING!
Throw away all yellow toner cartridges!!!!:D
+František Šindelář Then they won't print, not even BW.
+TheMrTape Just glue the yellow print head goddammit
+Kezi its only on LASER printers, they dont have print heads, only ink jets do... and inkjets make shit quality pictures
cheetor5923
I'm pretty sure there's a place from which the toner exits, glue that
+cheetor5923 Actually, most of the time pictures printed by inkjets look better. Text is better with laser.
It looks like a gentlemens agreement so as to prevent regulation of digital media devices. If they didn't do this, the manufacturers were concerned their products would be banned as counterfeiting tools or laws would be passed regulating their sale.
Here is a fun experiment, try scanning a $5 or higher denomination bill on a digital scanner and then open it up in Adobe Photoshop or most other digital editing programs. They will flat out tell you they can't display the image. That's right, you can't even take really good pictures of money because the software checks what your image looks like and if it looks like money it won't work.
+Subparanon It would probably be imposed limits on DPI a la GPS chipsets shutting down after x ft/sec. The yellow dross over an image is maybe less annoying than having the resolution capped, but it'll be marketability the manufactures were more worried about I expect.
+Subparanon That's the EURION constellation in action
+Alex Wright what the fuck?, GPS chipsets turn off after certain speed?, what a load of horseshit!, if i want to buy a GPS chipset and strap it on my home made cruise missile i can't?, bloody bullshit!
+Frédéric Dutrey EURION my ass. Scan with GIMP and it won't complain at all.
+Subparanon Opens fine in all the software I have (gimp, photofiltre, etc)
Fun fact: The paper manufacturing companies include specific fiber patterns in the paper to trace the origin.
Oh no, my collection of framed cat pictures are ruined LOL :-D
+zx8401ztv This would be OCD hell for pixel peepers.
Time to hack the firmware lol
+HDXFH Probably even in the individual cartridges for ink jets..
+Frédéric Dutrey it is lazer printers(toner) not ink jets. No color :)
+HDXFH Anecdotal reports that the latest version takes the form of a government chip the manufacturers just insert directly on the laser head, and even they don't know what it does. Teardown please!
+Captain Obvious Agreed teardown that printer and reverse engineer it
+John Ridley Well, I guess he could modify it both hardware AND firmware to think, that the yellow color is not a thing, it never existed, and it never will.
This is why I like my 10 year old Samsung CLP. Unfortunately, it doesn't feed as well as it used to, so all my bills are slightly off center.
+David Springs I mean my brand new XEROX Phaser. It doesn't feed very well, so my, uh, party invitations are off center. Yeah, that's it. XEROX. NEW. PARTY INVITATIONS. And my name is not David.
Thanks Dave for sharing this video. Is there any way to reset, deactivate or modify the code with some sort of firmware hardware?
Explains why yellow runs out even though I have never ever ever printed in colour before.
no wounder i use more yellow toner than the other colours Lol
So, looks like some conspiracy theories are actually true. Being paranoid sometimes has its advantages.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky
saying someone is "paranoid" is a cheap way to censor someone's opinion and end the discussion without having to present arguments.
- "The govenment is corrupt and is using us all to get more power for the already powerful, here's the proof!"
- "oh you are being paranoid, go put on your tin hat"
I know the way i act on the street would make anyone call me paranoid but so far no one has ever been able to steal something from me. While the not paranoid one have lost many cellphones and stuff. (and dont imagine a movie paranoid because that's the steroetype they want to impose)
Paranoid is like Nerd, is an ad hominem, and i'm not talking about schizophrenic people, with this word you can just call a name to something you dont like despite it having arguments to back it up.
You make free videos on internet but i'm sure some extreme capitalist nut could call you a "hippie" for not charging for them. All of them are just words for stupid people.
It's all subjective so it should ring your bs alarm but some are so conditioned to think that the only way the world works that they cant see it's just their opinion.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't watching you.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky There's a difference between healthy skepticism and paranoia.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky But this isn't a conspiracy theory. This is just a known fact for decades. Like he literally said in the video, this isn't news. There is no conspiracy.
Only the paranoid survive - some really successful person...
Since these are time coded they could be incredibly useful in a court case if you keep printed documents. Since you could prove dates that things were printed on. Then compare that against peoples statements and so on to see if they line up.
Mitigation tactic: make the background of your suspicious notes all yellow
I like how forward and straight to the point your videos are Dave, typical no bull$hit Aussie presentation
+paul cleary Thanks. I don't know anything else.
Now I know the secret of my yellow toner running out before the other colors!!
billyboi57
I think they just added more yellow ink so you wont notice it.
Thanks Dave! handy to know if you using the printer for other than printing on paper, where extra dots could be a problem like like transparency for pcb or lcd manufacture, or any other use out of scope.
I believe it's tied into the Eurion Constellation which they put into banknotes, which use similar colour patterns. I would suggest it's intended to ensure it scrambles the Eurion constellation, whilst identifying the printer it came from.
Illuminati confirmed
I don't care about it having the printer data printed in there, frankly. I care about having yellow dots over my printed images.
Way back then in Oz it was illegal to possess any colour reproduction device in case you print money. Even one company who printed money on tea towels got into trouble.
I dimly remember that the introduction of colour photocopiers were delayed by Treasury regulations.
I looked at output from a print from work printed on a HP printer, and sure enough the yellow dots were there. I looked at a print from my Samsung CLP510, and nothing is visible at all, so it appears that not all printers do this.
Very interesting stuff! I've heard Netflix do a similar thing with their video content so if people record it and stick it on torrent sites they can be traced. It'd be good to see someone reverse-engineer that too.
+Sean Duffy heard of porn producers doing that trace watermark thingy and busted one and charged at the court years ago
+St0RM33 Wow! Do you mean the producer got in trouble or they caught a pirate and they were charged?
Sean Duffy The pirate man..and it's not only on video, you usually catch the supplier not the releaser this way...but it's the releaser which makes money usually
+Sean Duffy A hugely different moral situation though, for a content distributor to include steganography in their own content, and a hardware vendor to put steganography into YOUR intellectual property. Not, theirs, note.
+Phantasmotronogun Yeah I agree, the video steganography doesn't affect regular users negatively! Only people illegally distributing the material. Having to use crappy plugins like Silverlight so they can enforce DRM is annoying, though.
you never see this used on CSI but some how they can zoom in in fine detail on some crummy low rez image.
+HUGSaLOT Valkyrie to this day i still have to explain to people that they cant actually zoom in like that.
+tjeulink Don't lie! We all know we can take 4 pixels from an interlaced 480i black and white security camera running at 25 FPS and get a full resolution face out of it! You just say "enhance" as you zoom in with the magnifying glass! It's an undocumented Photoshop feature. Try it out!
This is why I never bother streaming EEVB at higher than 240p. Just say "enhance" until it upscales to 4k, then it uses MUCH less bandwidth.
+Mostlyharmless1985 And don't forget that all computers in movies and TV shows make beeping noises that go in time with what is being displayed on the screen... and all password prompts can be bypassed just by typing "override"!
+vwestlife and the faster you mash at a keyboard the faster your 1337 hacking skills are.
i knew about this function but what i wonder is,
what happens if you print out a page completely in yellow, are the dots then displayed in white or do they disappear?
Very good! Makes one wonder where else they might have these watermarks, cameras? Scanners?
Thanks for this video! It's quite fun living in the USA where we were raised with "freedom", "independence", etc.. but have this giant nanny-police state over our heads. I really appreciate you effectively giving a shout out to the EFF here with links. Thanks!
"where we were raised with "freedom", "independence"
ua-cam.com/video/SXi38hV9zvQ/v-deo.html
"What type of supplies and page usage information is sent to Lexmark?
This option provides a summary of supplies and usage information. Some typical examples are:
Device identification -The device model, serial number, part number, MAC address, and the IP address associated with the device"
welp you aren't anon
Next time, when asked "Do you trust this printer?" by M$ Windowz, think twice before answering.
When I bought a HP 2600n back in about 2006 I noticed these dots straight away. There some information on the 'net about them then, and some info on how to decode them. Can't believe they are still doing it!
That explains why my yellow cartridge always runs out before any other one when I don't even print in color.
I thought that Bob was my uncle. Now you're saying that Sam's my uncle? I'm so confused. ;)
You have two uncles. Bob is the cool one, but Sam is the rich one.
How can they track someone if they got the printer second hand or is it pointless after the original owner has sold it? Also if you paid in cash how could they track you through store records?
+drupy1992 It would be more useful as evidence in building a case against you if you were suspected of something. Say they searched your place and found the printer, then matched it up with a print out.
+drupy1992 See those security cameras in the stores? They know the date and time it was sold...
+EEVblog It seems the majority of store security cameras in the U.S. are very low
quality and they don't store the video for very long. So it doesn't seem
very likely you would be caught through that method. I'm not positive
since it is through text but your comment has a derogatory feel to it
EEVblog. +Mark Z what you said seems like the best use of it instead of
being the primary reason for someone being investigated.
Yeah - in my scenario, there would have to be other evidence indicating you're the culprit before they could search and find the "smoking printer". :p
Lol the smoking printer, I like that. Another poster said it was used to find out who was damaging property by gluing propaganda on buildings. If that is true it could really ruin your day if the person you sold your printer to did something illegal with it.
Yes known this for years. Also remember when they added code so that you couldn’t scan or copy currency?
I heard about that so I tried it with a UK Banknote. The printer scanned up to the point where the EURion constellation pattern began then just stopped and was like NO.
I read something similar years ago due to printers having built in-hard drives that stored copies of every print out (obviously until it filled up) and such data could be extracted and used for whatever.
1: how about black&white laser printers?
2:how about ink based normal printers? color or otherwise?
3: its even in the huga advertising papers when you go close to them so the big industrial printers have the same things built in
4:because of this it actually uses more resources(printer casette) to print so you have to buy them more often 2stone for one bird :P
5: its not a government conspiracy :D its actually a printer manufacturer leage agreement so they can tell who's printing counterfit stuff :D
+Márton Szabó 1- and 2-
was wondering the same thing
It wouldn't surprise me if the printer makes reached an agreement so that the government didn't pass legislation forcing them to.
+Márton Szabó As someone mentioned out in another comment, I don't know about any others, but any printer I've owned recently will refuse to print in black and white unless there are filled color cartridges. I'd always wondered why that was in place, figuring it was just some bullshit to force you to spend money when you shouldn't need to, but I'm starting to wonder if this system is why.
+sirflimflam Dig through the menu system - there's likely an option somewhere to 'ignore consumables status' or something like that. My HP1600n has that and will now happily print b/w with any or all of the CMY toner crtridges empty (or rather over the count of the chip on the cartridge)
+Cole Logan (N1elkyfan) Yes self regulation happens all the time.
Does this include my dot matrix printer!?
+michael udovicic I don't know, but I'm keeping my daisy wheel just in case.
+John Ridley
_Definately_ not. :)-
+michael udovicic They have to go a bit more old school and compare the print outs to your dot matrix since its like a type write and they could match the letter printed to type writer.
+g6qwerty dot matrix printers used pins, hence the "dot matrix" pattern on every printout
+noanoxan dot matrix printers can't be traced.
Btw, WHEN IS THE MOBILE UA-cam APP GOING TO GET THE "FEATURE" OF EDITING COMMENTS?!
Serious fail, Google.
The tracking number maybe required for government departments. If a sensitive document is leaked they could in theory track it back to the source.
While this is known for quite some time now (just Google "eff printer id"), it's certainly worth while remembering people. Good explanation for the yellow toner always being empty first. It is probably drained also if you print pure black&white text pages with the driver set to avoid color mixing. While the pattern is mostly too faint to be perceptible with the naked eye, it repeats all across the page so the coverage and resulting toner consumption might be pretty considerable. I think this is not only a privacy issue, it's also an economical one. Anybody know how many yellow toner cartridges are wasted each year because of this?
So this could explain why printers wont allow you to print black and white unless you have a full color cartridge. I'm sure since now days modern printers run a linux based OS behind them with not much work put into security we could hack it out pretty easy.
+Mojobojo So please go ahead and hack it right now..
+Mojobojo Yeah people with the resources to get the fabric based "paper" currency is printed on would almost certainly be able to defeat this nonsense. So it's really just an annoyance for legitimate users. Just like every other form of DRM ever.
+Mojobojo you're assuming it's part of the user upgradable firmware and it probably isn't. If it is you're right though it would be entirely possible to do that but also it's clear not all printers have it if it's a problem.
+Mojobojo Best to print in fast draft settings, because that's about as close as you'll get to pure black and white if that's what you're after. Such a waste of colour ink with the 'High Quality Grey Scale' setting.
+Mojobojo not sure how you are going to use linux to hack out something that's wired into the firmware. Regarding requiring full color for "black and white" print, it's a case of your black not being black. In ink jet's case, it's a deep blue. Color dots are added to make a richer black. This isn't new or even a surprise, as even offset pressmen mix in colors to black ink when they are getting really twitchy about having a deep, dark black.
I've never seen a laser printer get upset about not having black toner for black prints, but the question to you is, why the heck are you using a color printer to print black and white documents? You should have a dedicated printer to the task of printing text.
This is fucking bullshit! Someone needs to create a open source printer! I will never buy another printer again, unless it's open source and doesn't have security shit like this and the whole money thing as well! If I want to scan a dollar bill I should be able to!
The closest thing to an open source regular printer would probably be those Arduino based drawing/writing machines, which are unfortunately very slow.
So, if you print something yellow that fills mostly the whole page, would these dots be near impossible to see?
Wow, the blue LED trick works a treat. I just tried it on mine and what would you know, they show up. Can't see them even under a magnifying glass. All over the page too!
I love Big Brother. 2+2=5. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
+101ful "Big Brother" is brainwashing most of the people. Orwell never thought that it would be feasible nor necessary to put more then about 20..25% over the population under (semi-) permanent surveillance. By brainwashing everyone, the need for surveillance goes down drastically. I am therefore each time confused when the big brother award goes to tech-companies and not dubious media-outlets.
Fuck.
We've got a great big 4 colour laser press and I can confirm it still does this, although it will quite happily print the Eurion constellation.
Similarly I think there is some protection pattern on currency that prevents copies from being made on newer multi-function printers and such. I tested it on the MDF I have here at work, and if you try to use a scanner to scan an American $20 bill, it prints an entire black sheet.
Thanks for the info Dave, I will have to check the printer at my work, and see if it does it, the only personal printer I've owned for years has been a little HP single tank inkjet photo printer which I don't think does it.
I find this kind of funny. I used to do support for HP. I didn't know this was a secret. Seriously, we used to tell customers about this if they ever asked why the dots were there or if they wanted to know why the yellow toner would be low when they only printed BW. We even had a neat trick where we put it in to service mode and print a blank page with a black toner cart in the yellow slot so we could see the dots.
Will have to check my Lexmark C510! The problem is that my printer is second hand, I found it at the dump!
What about black and white mode on color laser printer? Does it contain the signature as well?
I've seen these strange yellow dots on many pages, but never really gave them a thought as to there purpose. that's interesting!
What happens with the code if you print additional random yellow dots?
So how about adding random yellow dots in similar patterns in every image you print; would those printer-generated patterns still be legible?
I guess you could just use any kind of software to generate some random additional dots to mess up the code.
When there are no legal documents about it my guess is that it is self regulation. Companies get together and do that all the time to prevent harsher laws from even being suggested.
After checking the HPLIP print test page under Linux with my HP M178n, I couldn't see any random dot around. Neither with a color copy of a 50€ money.
Unbelievable, I had no idea that such practices were going on. Such forensic code is a violation of your civil rights, not to mention sensitive documents are exposed to prying eyes.
Yeah, pretty simple ASCII. My friend got me hip to the "serialization" encoding on printers about a decade ago. He repairs copiers in grocery stores, etc. Laser printers are some neat technology. So are dot-matrix, ink-jet, etc. The first "robots"? No that would the CNC machines and chemical/oil refineries????
What happens, if you scan such a printout and print it out again over and over?
Will it add another set of dots or keep the old overprinted
I would be highly interested in what on "official decoder device" could make of the marks on a page that has been printed normally, then has been inserted "upside down" and printed upon again with "nothing" then has had a bit of arbitrary length paper taped to its end and printed with nothing again (so as to offset the dot pattern with an arbitrary amount); lather, rinse, repeat for a (few) dozen times. Not to say that would certainly thwart identification, but I'd really like to see the device / software that could still make heads or tails of that...
Another fun thing to try is photocopying or printing currency - the printer firmware (generally) will stop you doing it.
Hey +EEVblog , since you're on the topic of printers/scanners, can you make a video about the eurion image recognition in scanners?
The age of the information isn't as important as whether it is still relevant and needs circulated.
Nice to have seen this video. It has been informative.
Do black & white printers also do something similar?
That camera in the microscope worked very well in this video ... definitely a great addition in dave towers!
+Alyx BioHaz 800x600 I used here has a decent fps. Still has exposure issues plus a pretty severe crop, nothing like what you see through the viewfinder, but good enough for something like this.
Everyone keeps asking how would they track it to you. The point is, even if they cant track the SN, once they DO find you through whatever means, they can prove without a doubt the page came from your printer.
Any info on how many ink jet printer do this? I've noticed this on just about every single HP inkjet I have owned and thought their brand was defective. I have also noticed it on the Canon inkjet o currently have. I'd like to see a list of inkjets that do not do this as well.
never thought about it before. Thanks
And all does, some are though very hard to see and could only be printed on one little small place exactly where you print something not on the entire page.
Ransom letter plot foiled! I guess it is back to clipping individual letters from various magazines.
You should also show the yellow funny patterns on bank notes
What are the odds that there are dedicated, standardized chips for doing this kind of thing that could be found inside these printers and disabled? Or perhaps a uniform bit of code somewhere in the firmware across these different brands?
Does each sheet have a separate number or are they all just related to the printer by the one number?
Is there a way to just take out the yellow toner?
timing , driving everything is in the flash just download the right firmware and edit it suiting your needs
This doesn't seem to be on uk printers, i have tested two HP printers a Konica Minolta, Xerox and Samsung and no sign. Anyone else in the uk found any?
So did Johan Guternburg do this with his printing press too?
Good job I only have an Oki ML280 Elite dot matrix printer, screams like a banshee when printing, but, no secret service dots of mystery... :P
I could not find those steganography marks on my lexmark X543
I wonder how hard it would be to create a background image (or modify the driver or something) with a pseudo-random pattern of yellow dots, to obscure the dots the printer puts in place. A grid wouldn't be good enough, because it'd have to be exactly aligned.
I always use the library printer for my ransom notes.
Well, I failed to find dots that look like this on a printout from my printer... but... the EFF notes that it's not always yellow dots. I'm guessing there still is something, and that I just need better and/or different viewing/analysis techniques to find it. Though if it's gone, that'd be nice. :) (The EFF has stopped updating their printer list since you posted this video, and so doesn't contain this exact model... but it says "yes" for some similar-enough-for-me-to-figure-it-may-apply model numbers.)
thats why i cut the letters out on my hostage note lol
We were made wise to this from a Xerox rep when we got our first color laser copier. Can't remember if it was that printer or our newer Canon, that actually prints the machine serial number in clear text (in pale yellow) on every page as well. We tried scanning a bank note on the Xerox (US $20), and it locked the copier up completely, had to reboot the copier. But if you folded the note (in half, or maybe only concealed a third of it), it would scan/copy fine. The Canon copiers we have, have a sticker on them to the effect of 'Do not scan currency on this machine', can't remember if we actually tried it or not though...
The new method is to now modulate the laser intensity and use grey scale modulation to hide the information in the images and text, but they keep the dots as well to make you think that there is no new security features. It only prints the dots for color images and text not monochrome black text mode.
Early days digital Xerox machines had a board built in that would detect when money or stamps where trying to be photocopied and not allow the copy function to take place.