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(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Oct 18th 2004 5:22pm





Your Printer Can Identify You

from the for-all-your-forgers-out-there... dept

It used to be that every typewriter had its own unique "fingerprint" that could identify which document came from which typewriter. Now, some researchers are suggesting the same thing may be true for printers. They've already worked out a system to identify laser printers, and are planning to do the same with inkjet printers. The issue is that the quality of manufacturing for cheap printers isn't nearly good enough to avoid certain unique characteristics. It doesn't seem to be able to perfectly pick out the correct printer every time, but authorities are hoping such solutions may help them to catch counterfeiters and forgers who have been using cheap printers more and more these days.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Pigz in Blue

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 18th, 2004 @ 6:40pm

    Dont be printinn out no pix of 19 and 20 year old girlz now, they be getting ideas!! Keep that lighter handy, yo.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    cheaper - sometimes more consistant :)

    identicon
    Gumby, Oct 18th, 2004 @ 9:24pm

    I have no idea how they are identifying the printers - but I wouldn't depend on the "cheapness" of the printers to keep the system working. Back in the day, we hired a guy who had invented a copy protection scheme that involved measuring the variation in bits being written to a floppy by an IBM drive. We later discovered that the cheap (non-IBM) floppy drives were so consistent that there was no variation! Also - quality manufacturing mantra says that if you can improve consistancy - cost goes down and quality goes up.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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