Printer steganography

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Small yellow dots on white paper, generated by a color laser printer (scale: 0.1mm). Click for a larger image.

Printer steganography is a type of steganography produced by color printers, including HP and Xerox brand color laser printers, where tiny yellow dots are added to each page. The dots are barely visible and contain encoded printer serial numbers, as well as date and time stamps.

In 2005, the Electronic Frontier Foundation cracked the codes and published an online guide to their detection.

[edit] See also

• Steganography
• Microprinting

[edit] External links

• Musgrove, Mike [1] Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers (October 19, 2005)
• Risks-L digest (October 26, 2005)
• DocuColor Tracking Dot Decoding Guide Electronic Frontier Foundation (October, 2005)
• EFF's List of Printers