Silk Road forums
Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: Ringo Deathstarr on June 23, 2013, 06:45 am
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So If I wanted to send a burned cd as part of my stealth, would people be able to find my personal metadata on the cd from itunes? I thought it might be good stealth as well as a way to spread good music. Just a thought. :)
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Everything ive read is pertaining to burning CDs and keeping or enabling metadata. Im not able to give you a definitive yes or no, maybe a more tech advanced member will chime in.
I suggest making a copy and seeing if you yourself are able to pull any unwanted info off of it.
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You must really love your customers to spend the extra time to burn a cd! Personally, I'd just send blank discs. :)
Not sure about the tagging 100%, but I would assume that someway, there's some identifying information on there. Also guessing that it would be known music, and not some bands that are local to your location?
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Risks associated with music files
I would be very careful going about this. If you have bought the songs from iTunes (or most digital download stores), your account ID will be contained within metadata (in the id3 tag usually). This is typically your entire email address, definitely a huge issue. A simple step of abstraction is to pirate the songs instead of burning your copies, otherwise you can use a tag editor like mp3tag to remove extra tags (it will appear in extended tags). I think you can choose not to include metadata as an option of the iTunes burning process, but that might just be the typical metadata like "Album" etc. .
Risks associated with using the iTunes burn process
The software that burnt the CD will be included on the disc (albeit not very accessibly). This may include your specific version of iTunes. Ideally you shouldn't burn with iTunes, since they're very anti-piracy and may well be taking steps to make CDs include more identifying information.
Risks associated with CD burning in general
It'd be pretty easy to get a fingerprint somewhere. Each CD is supposed to include an RID (Recorder identification) once burnt, a unique code associated with an individual disc burner. Theoretically it might be able to be traced back, but it seems manufacturers of drives aren't always enforcing this specification, and it's not clear how easy if at all possible it is to find the manufacturer and thus more identifying information. Optimally there's no financial record of you purchasing your computer, or CD drive if it was purchased separately. Additionally and unavoidably a burn time is added, you could change system time to ensure this information isn't useful. Alongside this the system name is sometimes attached to files. Lastly, don't use RW discs that have previously had other things on it, obviously.
Risks associated with CDs in general
Each burnable CD is supposed to include a SID (Source identification) when manufactured, this is usually visible as a string of letters and numbers on the ring in the middle of a CD. This includes information to link it to a manufacturer, a factory, a machine, and sometimes batch numbers. This links the CD to a batch of 10000ish, not entirely problematic. Additionally the fact that a CD with pirated copyrighted music is illegal, and this may draw additional Customs scrutiny to the package.
Risky? If you ensure your music files don't have your account details attached, you're probably golden. I doubt they'd really go into too much effort, because it takes a lot of time for so little payoff.
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Risks associated with music files
I would be very careful going about this. If you have bought the songs from iTunes (or most digital download stores), your account ID will be contained within metadata (in the id3 tag usually). This is typically your entire email address, definitely a huge issue. A simple step of abstraction is to pirate the songs instead of burning your copies, otherwise you can use a tag editor like mp3tag to remove extra tags (it will appear in extended tags). I think you can choose not to include metadata as an option of the iTunes burning process, but that might just be the typical metadata like "Album" etc. .
Risks associated with using the iTunes burn process
The software that burnt the CD will be included on the disc (albeit not very accessibly). This may include your specific version of iTunes. Ideally you shouldn't burn with iTunes, since they're very anti-piracy and may well be taking steps to make CDs include more identifying information.
Risks associated with CD burning in general
It'd be pretty easy to get a fingerprint somewhere. Each CD is supposed to include an RID (Recorder identification) once burnt, a unique code associated with an individual disc burner. Theoretically it might be able to be traced back, but it seems manufacturers of drives aren't always enforcing this specification, and it's not clear how easy if at all possible it is to find the manufacturer and thus more identifying information. Optimally there's no financial record of you purchasing your computer, or CD drive if it was purchased separately. Additionally and unavoidably a burn time is added, you could change system time to ensure this information isn't useful. Alongside this the system name is sometimes attached to files. Lastly, don't use RW discs that have previously had other things on it, obviously.
Risks associated with CDs in general
Each burnable CD is supposed to include a SID (Source identification) when manufactured, this is usually visible as a string of letters and numbers on the ring in the middle of a CD. This includes information to link it to a manufacturer, a factory, a machine, and sometimes batch numbers. This links the CD to a batch of 10000ish, not entirely problematic. Additionally the fact that a CD with pirated copyrighted music is illegal, and this may draw additional Customs scrutiny to the package.
Risky? If you ensure your music files don't have your account details attached, you're probably golden. I doubt they'd really go into too much effort, because it takes a lot of time for so little payoff.
Great Info!
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Yeah, great info, You really went above and beyond. So basically after reading that, it doesn't seem worth it. It was an interesting idea, but I probably will just stick with blank cds if anything.