The New Counterfeits

http://linns.com/news/postal-news/5...ine-purchase

Color me stupid, but there is nowhere in the system that the QR-type 2-D 'matrix' bar codes are scanned & validated?

Where is the NSA when we need them?

Not long ago, I suggested that the future of postage was 'free' bar code stickers that you would 1) apply (any new sticker to any piece of mail), and 2) register & pay for with your cell phone or at a kiosk or at a postal counter, and 3) be easily scanned & validated as it traveled (once and only once) thru the postal system.

This vision might be further away than I had thought.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

We are already doing this in Denmark, and have been for about a year now. Works like a charm - but no stamps.

Having spent s large part of my career designing and manufacturing bar code laser and imaging devices, I can tell you that the accuracy of the technology is far, far from perfect. The accuracy does indeed far exceed that of a human typing in data but often cause me pause when considered in the context of the importance of their application. For example misreading or encoding/decoding errors occur often enough to be a very real concern when you see them in a medical environment.

The 'acceptable' accuracy numbers for some of the linear symbologies is as low as 1 in 350,000 scans yet the USPS handles an average of 400+ million pieces of mail daily. (By their estimate over 98% of the mail is handled by bar codes.) This means a significant amount of bar coded mail is initially being misread/handled incorrectly but to their credit the USPS manages to eventually route the majority of these pieces correctly.

The development of 2d symbologies, and its dependent imaging/printing equipment, made it easier to counterfeit them; not harder. Codes like QR support more encoded info and have some additional requirements (like a 'quiet' area surrounding the bar code itself) but are quite easy to make and print. But truth is that technology has made counterfeiting all stamps even easier than before.

In my opinion bar code technology was never a solution for preventing or deceasing counterfeiting but rather one which made handling mail cheaper and more accurately than human sorting.
Don