Slashdot Mirror
Decode Your Barcode, Get Your Personal Info
Chris writes "The Swipe Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses. Check out the Data Calculator, which shows how much your personal info is worth, and how the data brokers get it. It's all part of the Swipe Project, which will be on exhibition at UC-Irvine in March."
that's "Point of Sale"
When I worked at Peter Piper Pizza it was quickly learned you could exit the program handling orders to get to a prompt. You could then swipe any magnetic card through the CC reader in the keyboard to see what was on it. You just had to swipe it at the right speed to get everything.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Older California licenses have magnetic stripes on the back, rather than barcodes. In order to read those, you'll need a magstripe reader.
Some states encrypt the data before they put it in the barcode on the back of your license. It helps to prevent fake IDs. At least in Indiana, some of the liquor stores have scanners in them, through a deal with the state to read the back of the ID which has a PDF 417 2D barcode. That way when some 5'5", black hair, brown eyed underage person presnts the ID and the data on the back shows 6'1", blonde hair, blue eyes, they know it's a fake.
The SWIPE Toolkit page has a link to a listing of the 39 states with barcode technology. It also lists those considering implementation of magnetic stripes and/or barcodes...
He uses XM satellite for news... (subscriber info sent)
I can see where XM might be passing out mere subscriber info left and right (XM is partly owned by the Borg, Clear Channel)
Technologically I'm not sure how they know WHEN you tune in or what you listen to since it's a passive reception system.
IANAL, but I'm a news writer at times...
And you can't copyright a fact. A copyright on a 9, 10, or 11 digit number just isn't going to stand, and neither is a copyright on an address. It is your address or number, it already appears on plenty of public records, and thereofore uncopyrightable documents. You can copyright an expression of a fact, so maybe a copyright of your address in your handwighting will stand... but you're not going to ever get copyright protection on your personal info, reporters can use your name all they want while talking about you, and the same goes for basic facts about you.
I work with Point-of-sale systems, so I know what is on a credit card. There are two tracks of data. The first contains the credit card number, name, expiration date and some checksum info. The second contains number and expiration date again, with more checksum. That is all. Also, the first digit of the account number indicates what kind of card it is:
3 - Amex
4 - Visa
5 - MasterCard
6 - Discover
Unknown host pong.
Here are the instructions: This SWIPE tool allows you to crack a 2D barcode. Ever noticed the barcode on the backside of your license? Ever wondered what information it stores or why it is even there? Use our online application or the stand-alone program and put an end to the mystery! It is your data, so shouldn't you have a look? Learn more about the 2D barcode and your driver's license.
WHAT YOU NEED TO BEGIN
1. Check to see if your driver's license has a 2D barcode. Currently 39 states use the 2D barcode to encode personal information on the backside of drivers' licenses. Look for a band of black and white squares in a random pattern.
This thing here is a 2D barcode.
2. Make a digital image of your driver's license barcode. You can either use a scanner or a digital camera to create this image. The image you create must be a color GIF file or a very high quality JPEG without compression artifacts. The image file size should be roughly 500k to 1.5MB and can not be larger than 2MB. The license image should be 1000-1500 pixels wide and make sure it is rightside up. For good results, this image must be in sharp focus with high contrast.
Based on recent use, our Toolkit participants are getting better results with scanned images than images taken with a digital camera. If you use a digital camera, be sure to point the camera directly at the barcode and the license is level in respect to the lens.
3. Decide if you want to use the online application or stand-alone program to decode your barcode. We have made two versions of our barcode decoder: an online version and a stand-alone program. They both will return the same results; the only difference is the stand-alone program allows you to decode locally on your hard drive. The online version is a little bit easier to use, but you will have to upload your barcode image to our server.
Note: We are not archiving any image files for future use. We will, however, keep track of the different kinds of information each state encodes on its drivers' licenses. This research will be made available to our SWIPE Toolkit visitors. No specific data or identifying information will ever be stored on our server.
Now it is time to decode! Please contact us if you have any problems or questions.
Always register for customer loyalty cards under phony names: Ted Nugent, Harry Truman, and John Cocktosen are favorites.
Need a fake SSN for your long distance service? (Really they don't need this) use 078-05-1120. It's an Eisenhower era specimen number that works 99% of the time.
Wired has a great story that these are pulled from. See it here
gzipped jar here
I've always wanted to see if my school's MS only infrastructure could stand up to a good pounding...
-theGreater Slacker.
PS: They say to scan your license in so that it's between 1500 and 2500 pixels long, or between 1 and 2 MB in size. I don't have a scanner, though. Or a job.
I remember when it first started being used, and we happened to be working on a PDF417 decoding program.
We ran the license's barcode through our decoder, and found that the only "encryption" used in the barcode was to store the data in binary mode, instead of the text (alphanumeric) mode.
NYS also puts PDF417s on the car registration stickers.
I wonder what use are these, without a PGP (or similar) signature?
I download the java app, ran it.
My wife's license didn't work, but mine did. They are both Oregon licenses, but I noticed hers had the sticker on it (larger bar code and not as "clean"), whereas mine was fresh (from last renewal).
Mine contained my name, address, license#, birthdate, etc -- luckily no SS#.
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Actually Cue:Cat's can decode most UPC style barcodes. If you run Win2k or XP you can use the keyboard filter driver from this site. Or for even more flexibility I like the Catnip program which allows you to alter the output including the barcode type and multiple delimiters, it can be found here among other places.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It could happen.
your also a liar
'Fraid not. I done it, just like I says I done. The stripe is DEFINITELY no longer doing its job, or otherwise why would the police be asking me about that? Maybe it was the steel table, maybe it was I just got lucky, maybe it was no damned good from the beginning. I dunno. But it's broke now, that I do know.
And while you're at it, please brush up on your social skills, ok?
Is it fascism yet?
No, you sir are the idiot. Speaker flux density for even mediocre magnets can be in the 10K Gauss range as seen here , and that's for ferrite magnets, rare-earth (mostly Neodymium) magnets can easily reach twice that. Sure simple ferrous magnets in cheap speakers are only around 1K Gauss but the OP might easily have had a magnet powerfull enough to wipe his card.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
more info on that legislation:
The House Judiciary Committee approved controversial legislation Wednesday that extends protection for facts within databases which are not currently eligible for copyright protection.
Opponents to the bill claim it is special interest legislation that will ultimately make it more difficult and costly to access public information.
The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (H.R. 3261) allows database owners to sue in civil court for damages arising from the theft of the information in the database
That depends. Shoplifting becomes a felony at certain levels. For example, in Georgia, the threshold is $300.00, or it's your fourth offense for ANY amount, or you took $100 from three different stores within 7 days. Once you hit felony shoplifting, the minimum sentence is 1 year. The max is ten years. Other states have different rules no doubt, but Georgia's came up first in Google.
Not really a thing to be playing around with. If they catch this guy on tape taking these things, and he racks up to the threshold before they catch and convict him, he's doing time. That'll ruin your life pretty well.
...
It is not just EZPass you have to worry about. You have to avoid the toll roads altogether. I was watching one of those crime shows on TLC/Discovery and they were able to prove the suspect had used a toll road because they had the snapshots of his car/license plate from the toll booth. The catcher is, he used the manual lanes and paid the toll in cash. Those cameras don't just catch toll cheats, they "catch" everyone. I don't recall the state, but if one is doing it, then you have to assume they all are (if you're paranoid like me).
WWJD?
JWRTFM!