BoingBoing picked up a tip from a person claiming to be able to unblur photoshop’s mosaic filters, possibly revealing sensitive info on checks/whathaveyou that you’ve posted to the internet during the course of your consumer blogging.
Oh no! What should you do? Paste black bars over the info, that’s our technique of choice.
Why blurring sensitive information is a bad idea [dheera via BoingBoing]
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Well, be careful how you put the black bars on there too. I think it was a report on an MLB player possessing human growth hormone that was un-redacted because the file format still had the original data embedded.
Black-barring it and then saving as a JPEG/GIF should work fine though.
You know, maybe what we need is for the BANKS NOT TO MAKE IT SO DAMN EASY TO USE AN ABA AND ROUTING NUMBER TO COMMIT FRAUD. How about about less window-dressing security and more actual safeguards??
(add Lewis Black head explosion)
And for that matter, cover up all POSTNET barcodes! They’re the ones printed by your address on letters, bills, envelopes, etc. In many cases, those barcodes identify individual delivery points, and with free public records available online, your identity can be discovered.
What affect will this development have on censored pornography?
After you paste the black bars over the sensitive information (if using photoshop), make sure you change the file name on the final save. Without changing the file name, the undo changes list is stored with the file and one could potentially restore the original image. If anybody needs a reference, drop a note and I can look it up.
I would have thought that the internet learned this lesson a few year’s back when Cat Schwartz posted some photos of herself that some enterprising geek proceeded to un-censor and share with the world.
NSFW link explaining the process – http://hutta.com/catcrop/
PDF’s are the files that have been “broken” many times before because a black box over the text doesn’t delete the text- it’s just a black box on top of it. Just select the text and paste it somewhere else.
Alternatively if I were doing so, I would black bar the info. View the image in Windows Picture Viewer, then take a screenshot of the image, crop that down to size and voila! 100% secured, no way someone could edit the file and obtain the info.
Karl, excellent point. Always block those too.