Scientists can match photos to individual smartphones

[HEXUS]

“Like matching bullets to a gun, only we’re matching photos to a smartphone camera.”

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[Luke7]

Wonder if this will ever be used in a court case?

[Corky34]

That's what i thought but then couldn't think of a situation where you'd need to prove what phone took a picture.

[gagaga]

I thought this was the case already? Similar to how printers embed a digital watermark in each sheet printed?

[peterb]

That's what i thought but then couldn't think of a situation where you'd need to prove what phone took a picture.

Indecent images spring to mind. Proving a link to the source.

[shaithis]

Indecent images spring to mind. Proving a link to the source.

Violent videos online, speeding/dangerous driving videos.

Pretty much anything that could potentially be self-incriminating..

[ik9000]

or slightly more negative: determining who the whistle blower is.... eek!

[elites2012]

flickr.com has been doing this for years. they can tell you all you need to know about what and who took the photo.

[this_is_gav]

Surely things like JPEG compression will destroy much of the data. How many real use cases could there be (particularly on social media) where an image hasn't been crushed to oblivion? Surely if the eye can see the degradation then a computer is going to be hard pressed to find a 'digital signature'.

[Xlucine]

This research is using photos of a known QR code, which is a long way from determining which phone was used to video something illegal

flickr.com has been doing this for years. they can tell you all you need to know about what and who took the photo.

That's just metadata, so basic model info and sometimes GPS location - that kind of thing. This is identifying which iphone 6 took a given photo, out of all the iphone 6's sold (or at least the 30 they looked at)

[Wrinkly]

No use for tracking down the source of a JPG though.

[globalwarning]

So... burner phones are a thing.