Your printed documents have fingerprints - Machine Identification Code (MIC)
Security and PrivacyIn the 80's Xerox designed a way to hide information in plain sight as a way to combat counterfeiting. An ingenious, simple, and hidden code of small yellow dots called Printer Steganography were added to each printed document to include the date and time of printing and the serial number of the printer.
This yellow dot matrix is virtually imperceptible to the human eye, but can be easily captured and decoded with a scanner or camera. Since then, new variations have been used, including using various shades of grey within the printed matter to include data. Whatever you print with, there’s a very good chance there is some form of MIC being included on your printouts. Is it ingenious tracking? Absolutely. Is it a good thing? You decide.
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Taking control of privacy with DuckDuckGo
Security and PrivacyPrivacy is complicated and every step in the right direction counts. Let’s start with web searches. We all perform web searches many times every day and Google tracks just about everything—it’s something that is alarming when you really dig into the nuts and bolts of what is being tracked and where that data goes. To quote Google’s privacy policy (05/29/2020): “We collect information to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like.” - In other words, they are tracking everything and you have no privacy when you use their services. Not uncommon and not a path that should be followed without careful consideration. This is posted on Youtube—the irony is not lost on us and it’s a great illustration of how living in this era is always a careful balance and mindful compromise.
As with anything, if you don’t like it, don’t use it. DuckDuckGo is an alternative to Google with a simple privacy policy: “We don’t collect or share any of your personal information.” And that’s the sort of thing we want to see more and more of.
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Password misconceptions
Security and PrivacyMost people think of password hacking as someone in a hoodie singling you out and guessing what your password might be, and while this can happen, it usually is not the case. The fact of the matter is that most password hacking is done by computers running password cracking systems, and computers are quite good at that sort of thing. In short: be smart, and expect hackers to be much smarter.
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