Rob, sorry, having worked in IT for many years you are confusing several different subjects and distorting others. First your refered to a link on YouTube. That video is only about laser printer fingerprinting. It hasnothing to do with scanning currency.
Hi Frank as I said in "Reply #12" when someone else was confused I clarified again that this is about two different subjects. See Post 12.
Laser printer fingerprinting has been going on for many years and has nothing to do with the government. It was an idea adopted by most of the industry to cut down on unnecessary warranty repairs and replacements. The industry was losing too much money to customers who were sending in "corrupted" printouts and getting printers replaced under warranty. Fingerprinting at least tied the results to a specific unit.
I am a bit confused by the statement since the larger Laser copiers/printers that companies like us use almost never just go back for repairs. A technician is always sent out first to try and repair it in the field, he may come several times with new parts until its fixed. Even in the old days we never sent a copy of a bad printout, we just called and told them what the problem was and the tech would come out.
As for small home printers, I have never been asked to mail a sample copy of a defective printout, I just call the manufacturer, and if over the phone trouble shooting failed they typically told me to box up the unit and send it back.
I have to admit that Daves Idea that this is used to trace the origins of a printed sheet of paper make a whole lot of sense to me. If your in law enforcement and have a piece of evidence that came out of a color laser printer, I cannot imagine that you would not have those dots checked to see if it opens up a lead.
Now for that tech who told you that your scanner calls uncle sam if you try to scan currency. There is a reason why he is only a low level printer installer ... he is an idiot. To prevent counterfeiting, the secret service, requested that scanner manufacturers voluntarily put code in their scanner drivers that will not allow scanning of U.S. currency. Many complied but the only thing that happens is that if you scan currency the printer driver pops up a dialog telling you that the operation has failed. Nothing is reported back to some secret government mothership. If you don't believe me run a packet sniffer on your LAN and you'll see that it isn't happening.
Frank I was not so much surprised by the fact that it might alert the authorities, what surprised me was when he said the printer/copier could detect currency! It is interesting that you are backing up what he is saying, the only difference is he says it's reported and your saying it is just rejected. In most cases like this I would do a bit of google searching but this is a subject that I do not want to have added to my already extensive google file
As for the driver being the detection part, I think you might have gotten that wrong. A normal driver would not have that ability, also a direct copy would not need a driver. The detection would most likely be something in the firmware of the the printer itself.
However even that was years ago now and the bureau of engraving and printing has since put more security into each piece of paper currency and no longer requests this from scanner manufacturers. For example my wife uses an Epson perfection 370 scanner on her windows computer to identify currency (she is blind as well) and it does allow currency scanning. The "your scanner will report youto uncle scam" is an old wive's tale based on some incorrect information.
hth
Frank
Yes I have seen a lot of the changes. At my wifes store she checks most large notes and she has shown me all the changes when a new bill comes out, I have to say a lot of it is subtle but I would imagine very effective. I was surprised one day at work when a tech told me to come look at a bill under a 50x bench microscope. Those very thin black lines in the bill were not lines but actually written text
I would agree that the newer bills are way beyond the capabilities of today's scanners and printers. I would also point out that a few of the cashiers at my wife's store have been given photocopied bills by customers and on a couple of occasion they did not even realize the bills were copies until it was later lodged at the bank.
73s
Rob
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Topic: "Printer Spying" heard about this for years but never seen an example until now (Read 16596 times)