smokescreen: online privacy software by jonathan ravasz

smokescreen: online privacy software by jonathan ravasz
all images courtesy of jonathan ravasz

aiming to solve the lack of privacy within web generated written content, slovakian designer jonathan ravasz has developed ‘smokescreen’. the application helps to censor information while messaging online, providing more privacy for web-based communication. the open source program is able to process and generate text that is unrecognizable for the most common optical character recognition software (OCR). the application generates random ‘pixels’ that are overlaid on the text, confusing the software, but still visible to human readers.

text generated by smokescreen showing the random ‘pixels’ that are overlaid

the open source application is able to create text that is unrecognizable to OCR but still visible to humans

the software helps to censor information while messaging online

close-up of the generated text, A1 print

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.