Canadian election databases use "canary traps"–and they work
ColinWright
43 points
5 comments
May 04, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (4 comments)
rdevilla
As the article states, it's an older practice so this maybe goes without saying - canary traps are also useful for tracking the flow of information throughout a population. A well crafted, bespoke whisper passed into one ear that returns to you from another direction is a very strong signal.
varun_ch
This reminds me of some ways Microsoft used to try catching/dissuading leakers. If someone could find a source for these.. The Xbox 360's dashboard used to have 'aesthetic' rings that actually encoded your serial number, so they could catch leakers I think I remember hearing somewhere (maybe Dave's Garage) about beta builds of Windows using intricate patterns as wallpapers to trick people into thinking it was also a leak prevention measure.
JumpCrisscross
Does anyone have a link to a knowledgeable summary of the political situation in Edmonton?
dataflow
How do you prevent this from being trivially defeated by getting multiple copies of the list and intersecting them?