4 ms·
"I say serial number is second because in a criminal investigation phorensics can also get a "fingerprint" of the printer by tracking imperfections in the way i
by burgerbrain 15y ago
"I say serial number is second because in a criminal investigation phorensics can also get a "fingerprint" of the printer by tracking imperfections in the way it's printed."
I know they used to be able to do that with typewriters, but can they do it with printers as well? I would suspect the imperfections of being too chaotic, or at least easy enough to change by changing the cartridge.
- SageRaven 15y agoI think it was a Purdue group that documented fingerprinting techniques on scanners and printers. Seems that stepper motors have fairly unique characteristics among models and even individual devices (though, with less accuracy).
- electromagnetic 15y agoAnything helps. Even if you can say it was printed on a Cannon over a HP can potentially narrow things down. I personally don't see what the huge deal is. I mean we're not going to get hauled off for disseminating communist literature and I don't think anyone plans on printing currency. So I don't know where the huge privacy concern whatever comes from, because unless you regularly forge time stamps on documents then I really don't know what the issue is.
- barrkel 15y ago* Government whistleblowers * Large corporation whistleblowers (may have resources to hire PIs with connections to track) * Civil dissent: think Arab Spring, not communist literature. The technology is not restricted to populations living under liberal regimes.
- SageRaven 15y agoIt's too late to edit my post, but I located the group responsible for this research: http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~prints http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~prints