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MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

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Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#112
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of a number of virtual mailbox services which can receive mail for you, e.g. anytimemailbox.com but there are several. You can either pick up in person, or they offer services like mail forwarding, opening and scanning, etc. Besides privacy against leaking your sleeping-address to businesses, they're also convenient for avoiding package theft if that's a problem in your area, and receiving/forwarding mail if you…

Or.....Install Linux and bypass all this stupidity. They will move faster to track each and every one of you, all the while shoving ads and garbage down each of your respective machines... and you all pay for it?!

You still want the virtual mailing address for other reasons honestly. Even if your os isn't tracking you or leaking things giving your real address to any business could lead to it being leaked because no one cares about security, etc. If that's in your threat model you should be using a good proxy mailer

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#113
post #59
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal.

> This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. No it's not. Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month. > A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal. I'm posting this in the genuine interest of people being able to maintain anonymity from data leaks, privacy leaks, and in general not needing to tell businesses more personal information than is necessary to render services. This is in…

They (the ones wanting to make privacy illegal) are just the ones that want to develop the tools and consume the data for it because it'll be good for their resume or some bullshit, or they're just intrinsically broken humans.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#114

Misleading title: the watermark applies to AI generated/edited images. That includes local models. Whether it applies to non-AI generated images is a question for the reverse engineers (or ironically, a suitable AI). My bet is on "no". Of course, the pre-AI versions of paint and notepad can still be installed with a bit of trickery, and it's worth it just for the UX.

Don’t care.

There is no reason to assign a GGUID except to identify the person, not that the photo is generated. This is nothing more than surveillance.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#115
post #101
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. Search for EFF printers secret tracking. Virtually all commercial printers embed an invisible identifier on every page printed.

It was about money anti-counterfeiting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

There is always a legit reason. It’s just never the only reason.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#116
post #69

How resistant is it to dithering? Can you just add +-1 randomly to each pixel r,g and b values and throw it off?

Probably not, if it's this kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#117
Until proven otherwise via open-source audits and reproducible binaries, you should assume that all commercial photo editing software is embedding watermarks in any way they can get away with. This includes the professional software that you pay quite expensive licenses for. You should also assume that even if they're not today, they will eventually be coerced into doing so, in the same way that printers embed tracking dots.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#118
post #59
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal.

> This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. No it's not. Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month. > A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal. I'm posting this in the genuine interest of people being able to maintain anonymity from data leaks, privacy leaks, and in general not needing to tell businesses more personal information than is necessary to render services. This is in…

> No it's not. Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month.

Did you notice that it's an affordability crisis out there? An absolutely enormous number of people are skipping bills, taking on credit, and using predatory lenders to make end meets, and your recommendation is to add another fee on top of things.

It's not practical or useful guidance for the vast majority of people. I strongly agree with supporting privacy, but this sort of behaviour (adding trackers, etc) to normal functions without a full disclosure and opt-out mechanism must be made illegal, otherwise we are just creating markets for "privacy preserving" technologies that are increasingly less likely to actually be effective for that purpose but sure do put on a good theatre of seeming that way.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#119

This muddle of an article makes it totally unclear to me if this GUID is attached by the AI generation call or every image I edit in MS Paint. I'm going to assume the former unless they release a clarification. Edit: Actually trivial to test, just save an image of all black and see if it suddenly has other values on save.

Assuming the watermark works like the upcoming AI watermark for text, then it uses the content's entropy to embed the information. An all-black image doesn't have much entropy, so it's unlikely you'd find anything.
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