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hellenhighwater:

splinteredstar:

prokopetz:

Do you think anyone back in the day ever spoofed a pigeon?

Okay, so the way sending messages via pigeon works is that each pigeon is “homed” to a particular roost, typically some sort of tower. If you want to send messages to someone, you get them to send you a wagon full of caged pigeons from their roost; later, when you attach messages to those pigeons and release them, they’ll find their way back home.

So picture this: you’re a nefarious sort who wants to intercept messages between roosts A and B, but for whatever reason you don’t have on-site access to either roost – too much security, or lack of personnel, perhaps. So what you do is establish your own roost C, raise a bunch of pigeons, then waylay the regular shipments of caged birds between A and B, steal their pigeons, and replace them with your own pigeons. And here’s the important bit: you keep the stolen pigeons.

Now, whenever someone tries to send a message from A to B, or vice versa, they’ll unwittingly be using a pigeon that’s homed to your roost C instead. The message comes to you, you read it, then you re-attach it to a stolen pigeon homed to the message’s actual destination and send it on its way.

Pigeon spoofing.

…..@hellenhighwater?

This could work, but the problem is the people involved. You’d probably need to get pigeons that look a LOT like the birds that are already in use, and even then, a lot of pigeon keepers might recognize a personality shift in an otherwise identical bird. But yeah, it would be possible!

You might enjoy this article about competitive flock stealing in Cairo.
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