Harry Potter Leak Caught Via Serial Number
A few days before the latest Harry Potter novel was released, someone thought it was a good idea to photograph every page and upload the full copy of ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows’ onto BitTorrent. However, amazingly it seems that the ‘enterprising’ individual might be caught because many cameras add EXIF metadata to photos which can be traced.
I’m amazed as I never knew that this was the case with digital photos, but on second thoughts I’m not surprised. Apparently in the past hidden data has been used in word docs, PDF files and other formats to track leaks. To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the info wasn’t inserted at the behest of our governments as part of the ‘war on terror’.
So, the next time you consider leaking a document (including 800 page dossiers containing F1 car performance data!) you might want to double-check that there isn’t information hidden away that will give away your identity!
BTW I’ve read the latest Harry Potter book and I thought it was fairly awful. There were long sections where absolutely nothing happened, and it seemed that Harry and his chums were sitting in a forest for weeks on end doing nothing, whilst there was no real explanation of what was going on in the wider world. I’m glad I don’t have any kids as I’m sure that the book wouldn’t capture their imagination, particularly if only a few chapters were read every night.
I was also disappointed that after reading in the 6 previous books what a nasty piece of work Lord Voldemort was when he was out in the wild, in the latest book where he was free to do his worst, we didn’t get to see him in action and there were just a few passing references to crimes against muggles.
And don’t get me started on the final confrontation between Harry and Lord Voldemort. After taking 7 books to build up to the final showdown, am I the only person who thought ‘is that it?’
Has anybody else managed to plow through the book? What were you final thoughts?
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Pingback by TechPark.net - » Digital Finger Prints in ‘Harry Potter And Deathly Hollows’ Leak on 26 July 2007:
[...] but most of the text was legible except for few paragraphs here and there. There are stories on ConnectedInternet and Gadgetell blogs about how the leaker can be caught using the digital fingerprints (EXIF [...]
Pingback by Connected Internet on 26 July 2007:
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Comment by listikal on 26 July 2007:
Maybe one day when I have kids I’ll read these, but not until that day. I still haven’t seen any of the movies.
Comment by morris on 26 July 2007:
i dont think it had a big impact ,if the harry potter lovers know how to get in to torrent world.
Comment by Ian Kemmish on 26 July 2007:
There ought to be a law, like Parkinson’s, or a principle, like Peter’s, do describe the way that the only people who are worried about what’s in EXIF data are those who were too lazy to find out about it until last week.
Comment by johntash on 27 July 2007:
I didn’t realize cameras added the serial number to EXIF data, but I had always knew they added information in there. I actually rely on it pretty heavily for the dates my pictures were taken and which camera I took them with.
Either way, unless the person who took the pictures registered their camera(if it’s even their camera and they aren’t borrowing it) I think you’d have a hard time tracking them down.
He should be glad his camera didn’t add geolocation to the exif data too
Comment by Nirmal on 27 July 2007:
I’m with Listikal, not read any of the books of HP or seen any of the movies.
Pingback by Digital Finger Prints in Harry Potter And Deathly Hollows Leak « Vamsi on 18 October 2007:
[...] but most of the text was legible except for few paragraphs here and there. There are stories on ConnectedInternet and Gadgetell blogs about how the leaker can be caught using the digital fingerprints (EXIF [...]