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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Fake ID Scanners or ID Verifiers

Do ID Scanners catch Fake IDs?

We often get this question and are careful to answer that the main purpose of an ID Scanner is to calculate age based on the date of birth stored in the IDs data stripe and record the event in a transaction log to prove due diligence.

We have seen some web sites advertise "stops fake ids" and we think that is misleading.

True, depending on the quality of the fake, ID scanners will catch some fake IDs, but that is not how they should be sold. Fake IDs are like Fake twenty dollars bills - they range in quality and its not possible to determine a document's authenticity by simply reading a bar code or magnetic stripe. One must also investigate the other security features on the document like UV inks (using special UV lights), or microprinting (using 10x magnifiers). Even after checking all these features, you still can't be sure its a real ID.

And finally there its still possible for a young sibling to be using their older siblings ID so you always have to be a bit of detective when checking IDs.

So, if you catch a fake ID with an ID Scanner, great. But keep your head in the game and don't believe that an ID Scanner is a Fake ID Catcher.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Georgia's new drivers license

Hi
First post on the Blog today -

It appears Georgia will finally have an unencrypted license by the end of 2009.
See http://www.dds.ga.gov/news/newsdetail.aspx?id=123

On this page, this statement ..."The cards will feature machine-readable barcodes that can be used by banks, retailers and other businesses to verify the information printed on the front." leads us to believe the licenses will no longer be encrypted.

On this brochure - see http://www.dds.ga.gov/docs/forms/DDS%20Brochure%20New%20License%20Design.pdf

In this brochure which details new license features, this statement ..."Data on the front of the card can be validated by reading the unencrypted 2-D barcode, and there are many other security features." leads us to believe the license will be readable.

Lets hope that retailers in GA will have the same protection that other retailers have who use our ID Scanners.