Snail Mail Security

February 3, 2023 4:24 PM

When held up to the light no useful information can be gained through a security envelope. […] What is kind of mind boggling to me is just how many different patterns there are. If you think about it, five to ten patterns could have been created and that would have satisfied any security needs. There seems to be a lot more than ten patterns…
posted by cardioid (28 comments total)

There's a lot of things I can look at and sort of get a Sol Lewitt vibe, but rarely so strongly as some of these lined up against each other.
posted by cortex at 4:46 PM on February 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is why I come to Metafilter. Top notch content, thank you.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:48 PM on February 3, 2023 [14 favorites]

A student of mine was cutting up envelopes for these, assembling the shapes into collage-mosaics.
posted by Rash at 4:56 PM on February 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

When….a grid wrecks your eye and you aren’t quite sure why that’s

A Moiré
posted by lalochezia at 5:03 PM on February 3, 2023 [104 favorites]

There's people! (bottom of pg 3)
I was surprised by those colors at the end.
posted by Glinn at 5:05 PM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

When a grid's misaligned with another behind...that's a moiré

When the spacing is tight, And the difference is slight... That's a moiré
posted by lalochezia at 5:05 PM on February 3, 2023 [55 favorites]

Before I started shredding everything I noticed that the best way to obscure a social security number or password was to overlay most of the digits and/or alphabetical characters on top. So to me the best security pattern would just be an alphabet soup ten or fifteen characters deep in any given spot.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:16 PM on February 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is cool! I like when people notice the design in the things we tend to take for granted.

I like the T-shirt but not enough to pay $45 for it.
posted by edencosmic at 5:23 PM on February 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

When the print is as fine as comedy divine
That's a Doré
posted by adept256 at 5:29 PM on February 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

There are rolling ink security stamps that lay down this kind of obscuring pattern, if you'd like to blot out things on box labels (to reuse the box, e.g.) or portions of documents you don't want to shred.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:40 PM on February 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Don't suppose someone could zip? I'd love to have these as a desktop background folder
posted by rebent at 5:49 PM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I like it. You could sell these as physical wallpaper in period-appropriate tones and saturation for a lot of money.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:58 PM on February 3, 2023

when the lines are compact
and just off, and diffract
posted by cortex at 6:01 PM on February 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

Imagine if Escher got this contract.
posted by adept256 at 6:10 PM on February 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

one steam kettle and Ker-plunk sticks.
posted by clavdivs at 7:05 PM on February 3, 2023

Oh, I used to print these. There were also alpha/numeric versions which just looked like someone randomly typed over everything five or six times. Those we could customize for a particular job (matching the font and pitch of the contents.) These others would just be in sheets purchased from a vendor (not sure which, since they were reused endlessly.)

Speaking of moirés, the backgrounds of commercial checks/coupons usually had a background of random noise which hid the word "copy" printed with slightly different sized dots. It was all but invisible until you copied it and the scanning process made the words "pop."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:27 PM on February 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

The algorithms that distort captchas to make them unreadable by machine. Dots, dashes, specks, swirls, smears. Maybe that deserves a collection. Captcha wallpaper of lorem ipsum. Captcha minecraft maps.

I want a captcha t-shirt that says FUCK ROBOTS.
posted by adept256 at 7:40 PM on February 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I fought SKYNET and all I got was this lousy CAPTCHA... tee.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:04 PM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I would subscribe to this mastodon bot.

...

I might make this Mastodon bot.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:56 PM on February 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I use tiny pattern ones to make paper things in the dolls house. Like paper bags and boxes and such.
Right now I am saving some of the blue ones to use as wallpaper. Luckily my bank has been somewhat consistent with the patters.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 12:16 AM on February 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

Oh, I have been making art out of these! Shredding them up and pasting them onto a canvas and then drawing bolder black patterns on top. It's going pretty well!
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 12:21 AM on February 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

I see an intersection between this and Blotter Art.
posted by mikelieman at 2:30 AM on February 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best envelopes I used to receive were made from recycled Bundsrepublik Deutschland maps. Similar still available in UK - made in Germany, though.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:45 AM on February 4, 2023

Sooo I wonder how well a neural network would do at defeating these. If the pool of existing patterns stays constant, that doesn't complicate the task nearly enough.
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:17 AM on February 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I want to smell that binder...

Great post, thank you!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 8:32 AM on February 4, 2023

I love this project and this post so much. Thank you!
posted by kimberussell at 8:51 AM on February 4, 2023

I saved enough security envelopes to fill a box, planning to collage the inside in lieu of wallpaper, and maybe i'll get around to it one of these days.
posted by theora55 at 9:46 AM on February 4, 2023

When I was a kid, I read somewhere that if you wanted to cross out something you'd written in such a way that no one could read it, instead of just drawing a line through it or scribbling it out, you should write over it with other letters, like aaaaaaaaaa, or another word, and I have done that since. It makes a lot of sense because horizontal lines, no matter how many there are, are a predictable pattern, but letters on top of letters make it hard to subtract the "extra" writing to see what's underneath.

There are a whole lot of papers in landfills with "Well I never hearts so-and-so" cleverly redacted. The secrets of my 10th-grade crushes are safe.
posted by Well I never at 4:35 AM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]