Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print

It's not new, but it's getting noticed: Jordan writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that several printer manufacturers are now and have been for some time embedding (nearly) invisible serial numbers in every document you print with their color laser printers, allowing law enforcement to track any such document back to the printer which printed it. The technology, ostensibly created to track down money counterfeiters, was created by Xerox about 20 years ago. A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'"

Comments

Countermeasures?

[fdiv(1,0)]

Anyone know any methods of getting around this short of physically ripping apart the printer and soldering a few wires together?

Re:Countermeasures?

[Tackhead]

> I suspect that if this technology has actually been around for 20 years, it has gotten good enough to be nearly impossible to bypass.

This technology has been around a lot more than 20 years.

In Soviet Romania, a sample page from every typewriter had to be registered with the police, so that any samizdat produced could be quickly traced back to the typewriter's owner. Use your imagination as to what happened to the owner, or Google for it.

In Romania every typewriter had to be registered with a local magistrate. Samples of letters typed on these machines had to be produced under the observation of the secret police so they could trace underground publishing activity.

- G. Davey, Christian Publishing: Before and After the Communist Collapse

In Soviet Russia, all photocopiers were registered with the KGB and kept in secure rooms, to which physical access was restricted.

Some samizdat works, mostly magazines, were typed on typewriter. The copies were indistinct and hard to read. I realized that the movement against violating human rights was doomed to be an eternal amusement of the few intellectuals without proper copyprinters. But where could one find a copyprinting machine in the country, where all the copiers were affixed with seals at night and placed in the special rooms where only proved KGB members could work on it. There was the only decision - to make the machine ourselves. It had to be easy to make and quite efficient.

- A. A. Bolonkin, Memoirs of Soviet Political Prisoner

The West is probably still playing catch-up.

Re:Countermeasures?

[mesach]

I used to work at a Kinkos in Southern California, We would get Regular visits from the SS looking to track down our Security tapes of the Self Serve color copiers, we got so that we could tell when people were doing illegal things and would point out that they were doing illegal things, and when they scoffed at us we would just point up, and they would "Stupidly" look up and give the cameras a good look at thier face so then when the SS would come in they had a good picture of the suspect.

BTW it better be REAL cash, cause people at kinkos (the average employee) has already played around with copying money, and knows what thier copiers can and cannot do and most likely will spot the fake... as I am sure you know, the copiers at kinkos arent in the best maintenance condition and the colors arent calibrated that well.

Re:Countermeasures?

[yorkpaddy]

I once printed up fake backstage passes at a kinko's. They weren't counterfeit or copied. I designed a logo that looked somewhat like that of a local radio station and put the concert's name on it. The employee said we don't let people print up IDs or counterfeit money, but this is just funny, so he let me. The passes were good enough for me to walk to the backstage area and act like I was supposed to be there. I ended up finding a box full of event staff tags and was able to go whererever I wanted to for the whole concert.

Just another reason...

[MrDyrden]

To be lazy and NOT send in your product registration card!

I mean, seriously. How else would they know who bought it and how to get a name from that serial number? I guess maybe if the store kept your credit card info on file or something and associated it with the serial number, but how often would that happen?

Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!

Was I seeing these yellow dots, or others?

[Old Man Kensey]

Speaking of Kinko's, I worked there for about a year and a half. A lot of the time I'd see yellow dots on color-laser customer originals that was being scanned for enlargement to poster size. I'd always remove them during cleanup, because it was easy if you knew Photoshop. They were really obvious when you blew the image up 450% on the screen to get rid of dust (a dust speck on an 8.5 x 11 will look like a big drop of ink at 36 x 48).

Up till now I've always assumed the dots I saw (usually in empty areas, and always in a regular, widely-spaced square grid pattern) were the scanner picking up the paper tone as a very light yellow and trying to dither to match. But was I actually seeing these anti-counterfeiting dots? And if so, was I committing a felony by removing them? :)

I never noticed our Tektronix color lasers (780/7700) putting them on its output, nor the Xerox DocuColor four-color xerographic copiers (DC12/DC2045/DC6060), although the only ones I really gave the eagle-eye inspection to a lot were the DC output since the Teks were in the customer area and we usually only heard about those when they were out of toner or paper. You could see them on the customer originals if you really looked and turned the paper so the light shone off the toner, but you wouldn't notice them if you weren't looking for them.

And if any of you out there in Kinko-land have a grid chart in your store that gives you enlargement and reduction proportions so you don't have to play with the damned wheel, yeah, I made up that chart.