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IBM Seeks Patent On Digital Witch Hunts

Posted by Soulskill on from the everyone-sees-a-unique-version-of-this-story dept.

theodp writes "Should Mark Zuckerberg want to identify a snitching Facebook employee, Elon Musk wish to set a trap for loose-lipped Tesla employees, or Steve Jobs want to 'play Asteroid,' they'll be happy to know that a new IBM 'invention' makes it easier than ever to be paranoid. In a newly-disclosed patent application for Embedding a Unique Serial Number into the Content of an Email for Tracking Information Dispersion (phew!), Big Blue describes how it's automated the creation of Canary Traps with patent-pending software that makes ever-so-slight changes to e-mail wording to allow you to spy on the unsuspecting recipients of your e-mail."

2 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Not new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My girlfriend works in the bid and proposal department at Oshkosh Corps. They regularly deal with top secret government contracts for armored vehicles. Each persons copy of whatever paperwork has different sets of typos, so if there are any leaks, they know exactly who it came from.

    And yes, they have caught corporate spies with this before.

  2. Re:What an advance! by Threni · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To be honest I assumed this sort of thing was already being done. It's just fingerprinting, using whatever medium is being used.