January 12, 2004

Software and Printers Have Anti-Currency-Counterfeiting Technology Built In.

Software such as Photoshop, and most color printers, already have the ability to detect if an image looks like currency—so that such files cannot be opened or printed.

Adobe and other makers of image-manipulation programs have, at the behest of a little-known group of national banks, inserted secret technology into their programs to foil counterfeiting, the companies acknowledged this week.

Photoshop and other programs will no longer be able to open files containing images of several nations’ currencies, said Kevin Connor, director of product management for Adobe. The code to detect such images came from the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, a low-profile association representing the national banks from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

At the request of the group, Adobe and other software companies have inserted the functionality into their programs.

“This is a relatively new thing,” Connor said. “We are not the first software application to do this, but we are probably the largest.”

While Connor didn’t know which currencies were protected by the technology, users of Adobe Photoshop CS and Jasc’s Paintshop Pro have complained that files containing images of the new U.S. $20 bill and several Euro denominations cannot be opened. Moreover, Connor stressed that the technology is already included in most color printers.

This looks to me like a reasonable anti-counterfeiting measure.