Thread: "Watermarking" maps

Originally Posted by pitruchio

voyager56
I certainly understand that you are interested in the possibility watermarking on the map, but please answer, why they are necessary on the card? It will protect from illegal distribution and using?

Watermarking is used to identify who leaked the map or other product. Each client receives a map with different watermarks. This allows identify leaked map owner.

Originally Posted by kunix

voyager56, just download two maps and compare them in HEX-editor and fill the differing bytes with some garbage. Most probably the watermarking algorithm is primitive and this will work.
However, with some advanced algorithms they can detect you even if you've compared 2,3 or even N watermarked maps.
But I really don't think those guys are THAT sophisticated. That's just impractical.

I know about hex comparison, but I do not have maps to compare. Somebody shared a map and that person told me that map is watermarked. I want to share this map with noeman's community. So I have to remove watermark. The map was downloaded from some local Garmin distributors site. In this case I think watermark is inserted on the fly.
You pay money and just after that you download the map.