Xerox, JBIG2 and number mangling.

[Boustrophedon]

Following a deep rabbit hole from a Tom Scott newsletter led to a series of articles on how some Xerox scanners and copiers using the JBIG2 compression algorithm are randomly substituting one number or letter for another one, typically 6s and 8s.

This is a known problem, both with the JBIG2 algorithm and known at Xerox as a problem with their machines.

Articles:
http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/08 ... n_scanning
https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0 ... t_findings

Although the method of PM&S can achieve outstanding compression, substitution errors could be made during the process if the image resolution is low.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2

Device control panel settings:


I will leave it to your imagination the problems that might (legally) occur with copied engineering drawings, data or medical information.

[jaap]

Is this still a problem? This was news 10 years ago...

[Boustrophedon]

So it would seem.
But then I hadn't heard about it before and found it interesting.