Spymarks, Not Watermarks
3 hours ago
- Spymarks are hidden signals embedded in media (images, audio, text, video) that enable user tracking without consent.
- Google SynthID is a spymark that encodes database identifiers linked to personal data like name, IP, and political affiliation.
- Spymarks differ from traditional watermarks, which are visible and benign, and from editable metadata like EXIF tags.
- Audio spymarks use imperceptible modifications to waveforms or frequency domains, surviving compression and re-encoding.
- Text spymarks alter word choices to create statistical patterns that carry tracking payloads.
- Printer tracking dots are an early spymark example from the 1980s.
- Spymarks pose risks to whistleblowers and privacy, as they can trace content and associate it with identities.
- The term 'spymark' is proposed to clarify the privacy concern, merging 'spy' (clandestine surveillance) and 'mark' (embedded signal).