6 ms·

I believe they are in place to help the Secret Service track down people who counterfeit money.[0] In 2012, the Secret Service released a document in response

I believe they are in place to help the Secret Service track down people who counterfeit money.[0] In 2012, the Secret Service released a document in response to an FOIA request that listed the manufacturers that agreed to add these tracking dots at that time.[1] [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24askk-001.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24... [1] https://www.scribd.com/doc/81897582/microdots-pdf https://www.scribd.com/doc/81897582/microdots-pdf

nerdponx 9y ago
Can you convincingly counterfeit money with a home inkjet printer? Find that hard to believe.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  Well, who do you have to convince?...
- Tiki 9y ago
  There was a story a while back about a team of people working out of a garage who were bleaching lower denominations and printing a higher value note onto the bleached paper. Higher end inkjets are quite capable, the 'feel' was the biggest issue.
  - ramjamrodeo 9y ago
    I'd be interested in seeing an article if that was real. Otherwise the only place I've heard of that was the plot in one of the Jack Reacher novels.
    - cmiles74 9y ago
      I found an article: man in Florida bleaching fives to print hundreds. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-10/news/os-bleached-money-arrests-20120907_1_counterfeit-bills-counterfeit-money-genuine-money http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-10/news/os-bleac...
  - SpikeDad 9y ago
    Would only work on old currency. Currency since 1990 has had embedded plastic denomination strips so it's easy to check if you're wondering. In 1996 they started putting the denomination strips in difference locations for each value so you don't even need to be able to read it. Plus the bills are printed using intaglio so yep, real currency has raised ink but that's hard to reproduce.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  Maybe good enough to fool a vending machine... There is this story of a guy who would ink-jet print the front and back of money on thin newsprint then glue them together with a fake security strip in the middle. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Well it probably cost more in materials than the face value of it
    - 24gttghh 9y ago
      Ahh the sign of a good hobby!
  - samstave 9y ago
    Back in the 80s there was a famous "hack" which was to take a small bill, in my case a $5 bill, and one would use clear packing tape and create a tether on the bill. You would put the bill in a vending machine and once it read it and credited the transaction you could yank the bill out of the machine and make a selection, and you'd pic the cheapest thing in the machine and it would give you the goods and change. The only machine in my town that this worked on was at the local post office on the stamp machine. I had a shit-ton of stamps, and nobody to write to as a twelve year old hooligan. But I was able to buy a lot of ice cream and lame toys with the change stolen from that machine. Sorry post office!
    - dghughes 9y ago
      There was a hack to make $5 bills get credited as $100 bills. It was on the JCM WBA-22/23 bill validator model used in slot machines. You needed a small screwdriver a wire and a battery. Stick it between the door bezel and under the BV then short two pins and insert the $5 bill. All while avoiding surveillance of course. The fix was to cover the IC with anti-static black cardboard.
- ptero 9y ago
  Probably not today, with all the new features, but maybe earlier, e.g. when color inkjets became mainstream and for small denomination bills (no one checks watermarks when accepting old $1 bills). That said, I suspect this mis-feature is being forced on manufacturers now ostensibly for anti-counterfeiting, but in reality to enable tracking for other 3-letter agencies :(
  - daxorid 9y ago
    What are the consequences of telling NSA "no"? Is there any law that permits the USG to compel any action, other than those legal requests pursuant to an active investigation, on the part of private companies?
    - JackFr 9y ago
      How about the the General Services Administration saying "We won't buy, nor allow contractors to use, any printers that don't comply." If I were a manufacturer, that would be compelling.
      - cosinetau 9y ago
        That would be too easy though. Since we're acting as the toughest game in town, why not also bully people?
    - nobodyorother 9y ago
      NSLs? With them, any action is intimately related to active investigations, because they're completely without oversight.
    - rbritton 9y ago
      The closest I know of is the All Writs Act [0] that surfaced during the FBI vs Apple situation resulting from the San Bernadino shooting. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act
    - fnordfnordfnord 9y ago
- thinkMOAR 9y ago
  gonna disclose nothing. yes you can.
- simias 9y ago
  Depends who you want to fool. If it's a human-to-human transaction in a busy setting (like a marketplace transaction or something similar) it's pretty easy to slip a simple fake without getting caught. Especially if you mix it with real currency and only use small bills. I remember watching a news report a few years ago where the journalist tried doing just that (with photocopied euro bills on regular paper without any clever trick) and he had a pretty high success rate. That being said I can't really imagine anybody doing that at a big enough scale that somebody would bother tracing printer dots back to them. I don't think the authorities are going to bother with that if you slip a dozen fake 10 euro bills around Paris. I guess it can be dissuasive though, keeping honest people honest.
  - kemiller2002 9y ago
    I remember hearing stories about a friend's cousin would use photo copiers / printers to copy small bills to put in coke machines, change machines etc. I never tried this myself for obvious reasons, so I don't know if it actually worked, but I can see how being able to track down the printer type etc. would help in this.
- stuaxo 9y ago
  US notes does seem to have way less security features than other countries.
  - SpikeDad 9y ago
    US consumers are very conservative when it comes to money. I'm not sure why exactly. Plus no one prints more bills than the US Treasury so some security features would be too expensive or wouldn't hold up for the period of time necessary. Just show someone some Canadian money and you'll most likely get snickers and "Monopoly money" comments. That being said US currency does have a number of security features - maybe other countries are overdoing it?
- dghughes 9y ago
  Many countries have switched to plastic notes making it much harder to counterfeit them. You can print on plastic but I'd say it's not the same as trying to make a paper note using a printer.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Not exactly. It takes determination and some measure of cleverness to get close enough for some people: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter
- cubano 9y ago
  As an experiment in 2001 I created US $5, $10, and $20 notes on inkjet and actually passed them. The paper was the hard part actually...inkjets certainly will print high quality counterfeits.
  - SpikeDad 9y ago
    Really? I guess the people you passed were not paying much attention. Inkjet prints flat money - US currency is intaglio printed which makes the print raised. Plus you can't duplicate the micro printing, the security thread or the color changing ink. I guess for 5's maybe but 20's? Everyone should take a quick look at those.
    - cestith 9y ago
      Those features are fairly recent. In a high-volume cash business like fast food or a truck stop 20s will almost never get scrutiny unless the reflectivity or the feel of the paper are off. I used to process $8,000 to $12,000 an hour on a busy day, usually almost half of that in cash.
    - cubano 9y ago
      This was 2001 remember, and all the "p-notes", as they were called, I created were the old-school bills with few security measures. Yes I passed them at fast-food places and, to be honest, for drug deals, which perhaps doesn't count as much to some, but I do remember a McDonalds where the drive-thru person said "sorry we can't take this" and I just feigned surprise and handed them a real note. Also, I used a linen paper from office depot that gave the notes a decent feel.

nerdponx 9y ago

Can you convincingly counterfeit money with a home inkjet printer? Find that hard to believe.

hyperbovine 9y ago
Well, who do you have to convince?...
Tiki 9y ago
There was a story a while back about a team of people working out of a garage who were bleaching lower denominations and printing a higher value note onto the bleached paper. Higher end inkjets are quite capable, the 'feel' was the biggest issue.
- ramjamrodeo 9y ago
  I'd be interested in seeing an article if that was real. Otherwise the only place I've heard of that was the plot in one of the Jack Reacher novels.
  - cmiles74 9y ago
    I found an article: man in Florida bleaching fives to print hundreds. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-10/news/os-bleached-money-arrests-20120907_1_counterfeit-bills-counterfeit-money-genuine-money http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-10/news/os-bleac...
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  Would only work on old currency. Currency since 1990 has had embedded plastic denomination strips so it's easy to check if you're wondering. In 1996 they started putting the denomination strips in difference locations for each value so you don't even need to be able to read it. Plus the bills are printed using intaglio so yep, real currency has raised ink but that's hard to reproduce.
cmiles74 9y ago
Maybe good enough to fool a vending machine... There is this story of a guy who would ink-jet print the front and back of money on thin newsprint then glue them together with a fake security strip in the middle. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Well it probably cost more in materials than the face value of it
  - 24gttghh 9y ago
    Ahh the sign of a good hobby!
- samstave 9y ago
  Back in the 80s there was a famous "hack" which was to take a small bill, in my case a $5 bill, and one would use clear packing tape and create a tether on the bill. You would put the bill in a vending machine and once it read it and credited the transaction you could yank the bill out of the machine and make a selection, and you'd pic the cheapest thing in the machine and it would give you the goods and change. The only machine in my town that this worked on was at the local post office on the stamp machine. I had a shit-ton of stamps, and nobody to write to as a twelve year old hooligan. But I was able to buy a lot of ice cream and lame toys with the change stolen from that machine. Sorry post office!
  - dghughes 9y ago
    There was a hack to make $5 bills get credited as $100 bills. It was on the JCM WBA-22/23 bill validator model used in slot machines. You needed a small screwdriver a wire and a battery. Stick it between the door bezel and under the BV then short two pins and insert the $5 bill. All while avoiding surveillance of course. The fix was to cover the IC with anti-static black cardboard.
ptero 9y ago
Probably not today, with all the new features, but maybe earlier, e.g. when color inkjets became mainstream and for small denomination bills (no one checks watermarks when accepting old $1 bills). That said, I suspect this mis-feature is being forced on manufacturers now ostensibly for anti-counterfeiting, but in reality to enable tracking for other 3-letter agencies :(
- daxorid 9y ago
  What are the consequences of telling NSA "no"? Is there any law that permits the USG to compel any action, other than those legal requests pursuant to an active investigation, on the part of private companies?
  - JackFr 9y ago
    How about the the General Services Administration saying "We won't buy, nor allow contractors to use, any printers that don't comply." If I were a manufacturer, that would be compelling.
    - cosinetau 9y ago
      That would be too easy though. Since we're acting as the toughest game in town, why not also bully people?
  - nobodyorother 9y ago
    NSLs? With them, any action is intimately related to active investigations, because they're completely without oversight.
  - rbritton 9y ago
    The closest I know of is the All Writs Act [0] that surfaced during the FBI vs Apple situation resulting from the San Bernadino shooting. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act
  - fnordfnordfnord 9y ago
thinkMOAR 9y ago
gonna disclose nothing. yes you can.
simias 9y ago
Depends who you want to fool. If it's a human-to-human transaction in a busy setting (like a marketplace transaction or something similar) it's pretty easy to slip a simple fake without getting caught. Especially if you mix it with real currency and only use small bills. I remember watching a news report a few years ago where the journalist tried doing just that (with photocopied euro bills on regular paper without any clever trick) and he had a pretty high success rate. That being said I can't really imagine anybody doing that at a big enough scale that somebody would bother tracing printer dots back to them. I don't think the authorities are going to bother with that if you slip a dozen fake 10 euro bills around Paris. I guess it can be dissuasive though, keeping honest people honest.
- kemiller2002 9y ago
  I remember hearing stories about a friend's cousin would use photo copiers / printers to copy small bills to put in coke machines, change machines etc. I never tried this myself for obvious reasons, so I don't know if it actually worked, but I can see how being able to track down the printer type etc. would help in this.
stuaxo 9y ago
US notes does seem to have way less security features than other countries.
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  US consumers are very conservative when it comes to money. I'm not sure why exactly. Plus no one prints more bills than the US Treasury so some security features would be too expensive or wouldn't hold up for the period of time necessary. Just show someone some Canadian money and you'll most likely get snickers and "Monopoly money" comments. That being said US currency does have a number of security features - maybe other countries are overdoing it?
dghughes 9y ago
Many countries have switched to plastic notes making it much harder to counterfeit them. You can print on plastic but I'd say it's not the same as trying to make a paper note using a printer.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Not exactly. It takes determination and some measure of cleverness to get close enough for some people: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-inkjet-counterfeiter
cubano 9y ago
As an experiment in 2001 I created US $5, $10, and $20 notes on inkjet and actually passed them. The paper was the hard part actually...inkjets certainly will print high quality counterfeits.
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  Really? I guess the people you passed were not paying much attention. Inkjet prints flat money - US currency is intaglio printed which makes the print raised. Plus you can't duplicate the micro printing, the security thread or the color changing ink. I guess for 5's maybe but 20's? Everyone should take a quick look at those.
  - cestith 9y ago
    Those features are fairly recent. In a high-volume cash business like fast food or a truck stop 20s will almost never get scrutiny unless the reflectivity or the feel of the paper are off. I used to process $8,000 to $12,000 an hour on a busy day, usually almost half of that in cash.
  - cubano 9y ago
    This was 2001 remember, and all the "p-notes", as they were called, I created were the old-school bills with few security measures. Yes I passed them at fast-food places and, to be honest, for drug deals, which perhaps doesn't count as much to some, but I do remember a McDonalds where the drive-thru person said "sorry we can't take this" and I just feigned surprise and handed them a real note. Also, I used a linen paper from office depot that gave the notes a decent feel.