Re: Tracking printed docs: EFF examines codes printed on docs

[Xu He <xuminator () gmail com>]

There was an article a few years ago about the anti-counterfeiting feature
in the new Euro and new US 20 Dollar. Just can't seem to find the link. To
summarize it from what I remember, there are tiny yellow "o" or zero's in
the new currencies that's of the same size (1mm). When someone tries to
zerox one of these bills, the color printer will stop working after a number
of attempts. Take a look at the back of the 20 dollar bill, and you will see
that the '2' and '0' are of looks like different type of fonts.


On 10/17/05, Jon O. <jono () networkcommand com> wrote:
> http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/wp.php
>
> On Nov. 22, 2004, PC World published an article stating that "several
> printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing
> code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those
> machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the
> hidden markings to track counterfeiters." According to the article, the high
> fidelity of outputs from color machines to their original documents suggests
> that counterfeiters can potentially succeed in creating high-quality
> counterfeited currency and government documents using these machines. At the
> request of the United States Secret Service, manufacturers developed
> mechanisms that print in an encoded form the serial number and the
> manufacturer's name as indiscernible markings on color documents. The Secret
> Service and manufacturers would be able to decode these values from the
> markings and in the event a color machine was used to print a suspected
> counterfeited document, these values would be used with customer information
> to discover the identity of the machine's owner.
>
> [see link above for more info]