31.5.2022
Learned only today that back in January @json_dirs was able to identify also an hashcode injected by Elsevier. Interesting that “just” exiftool is sufficient for that.
More fun publisher surveillance:
Elsevier embeds a hash in the PDF metadata that is *unique for each time a PDF is downloaded*, this is a diff between metadata from two of the same paper. Combined with access timestamps, they can uniquely identify the source of any shared PDFs. pic.twitter.com/D9KxnXkMVu— jonny saunders (@json_dirs) January 25, 2022
CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 01.04.2026, click to save as PDF