We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps
royalmail.com
royalmail.com
> The barcodes will enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world through the Royal Mail app
> Why are you adding barcodes to stamps?
>
> The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way for innovative services for customers.
"The barcodes will prevent fraud" would be fine.
(People sell counterfeit or used stamps on eBay. The first result is [2], on sale for £9.99 with a face value of £80. Royal Mail's own site even says "Counterfeit stamps are often sold in quantities of 55..." [3]. Obviously eBay have a "policy" against this, and obviously they don't enforce it [4].)
[2] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284986420186
[3] https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/...
[4] https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-i...
I am surprised there are so many listed on eBay.
Just the two "sponsored" listings on eBay for the search "first class stamps" have already sold over £1000 of counterfeit stamps, and about £20 in fees for eBay.
[1] https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/...
I'm not. They make money from it, just like Amazon makes money from the counterfeiters, scammers, and fraudulent sellers. Google has plenty of ads for fake stamps if you search for stamps - they're about the only ones you'll find ads for.
Someone will write an article that gets traction talking about the vibrant market for fake stamps on eBay and Google, and they'll issue the Standard Tech Apology, "We are so, so sorry you caught us doing this and we will try harder to avoid you catching us doing it in the future," they'll clamp down for a few months, and then will quietly ignore the rise in the profitable listings again after the attention dies down.
People selling fake products are great ad buyers. They have to bid high enough to be placed ahead of "organic" results and legitimate stuff, and if they get caught, you can keep their money per the terms and agreements and such.
Maybe anarchists use these exclusively to avoid paying the man?
Likewise, I suppose a postal service must weigh the cost/benefit of pursuing counterfeit stamps--it might not be costly enough compared to other forms of problems.
A tip to anyone wanting to get into this: legitimate bulk postage is sold by the pound!
The barcode would only be useful to prevent counterfeiting if each stamp had a unique barcode that could be invalidated once used, but the linked page doesn't say whether or not that is the case.
This is a trivial problem compared to handwriting OCR going on in some post offices in the world, and does not require barcodes.
Bulk mailers have long been required to barcode mail with destination information to reduce the need to OCR addresses, which is a particularly complex and expensive part of the operation. Non-bulk mail actually gets barcoded by an inline printer in the sorting machine after the first time it is OCRd, to avoid the need to OCR it again later in handling. Well, that's the case in the US. From what I can tell Royal Mail doesn't currently do this, and so they're going to have to OCR the address repeatedly on all non-bulk items. At this point, putting a unique barcode on the stamp and then associating it with the destination in an online database is probably much cheaper for them to roll out than adding barcode printing to their sorting equipment.
And it provides counterfeiting and fraud resistance, along with the ability to add detailed tracking to letters very cheaply.
Yes, this is what I was curious about.
(For non-Americans' benefit: All USPS shipping is tracked with barcodes, except for stamped mail. USPS offering this would benefit merchants who would be able to ship very small/thin items in envelopes with tracking, and people in general who want to be able to follow their stamped letters' progress.)
Take a closer look at the bottom right hand edge of some non-bulk mail. Huh, those are some faint orange lines. What's going on? That's RM4SCC encoded data from the sorting machinery.
It's not "really" faint orange, that's a fluorescent ink, inside the machine under appropriate lighting rather than the faint orange these lines show up very nicely. They're encoding (2 bits per line) a unique identifier so the system can track every individual piece of mail for a few weeks, plus its Delivery Point destination.
[I would guess "faint orange" was chosen because it's unobtrusive, yet you can't honestly claim it's hiding]
After the initial OCR run, later machines just see "Oh, #238205724145, still headed for 18 Long Drive, AB12 34XZ" without needing OCR and then people at a higher level can ask e.g. why the fuck is there so much mail handled by this Glasgow sorting office and find that aha, some bozo has directed all the mail for Swansea via this office, what a buffoon, we'll fix that.
Probably if you're murder police, you could get Royal Mail to scan it and tell you this crucial envelope entered their system at about 12:30 on September 24th in Liverpool central office, and it was eventually given to a human to deliver at 08:47 last Tuesday, but I'd guess this is rarely useful and it's not something they will tell random members of the public. The Delivery Point is redundant if you're a human since the address is printed in human readable letters.
I imagine the fluorescent ink was chosen so it's easily readable on all background colors - well except orange fluorescent envelopes.
i said fluorescent orange was my favourite colour, they said i was 'anti social'
> Our new barcoded stamps also enable you to watch and share exclusive Shaun the Sheep videos via the barcode itself, using the Royal Mail App.
Initially I thought operational efficiencies and fraud prevention were the likely reasons, but oh hey look there's a marketing angle too.
I wonder why this is? Surely it would be relatively easy for a counterfeiter to sell them in quantities of 50 instead.
Assuming (as reported) the stamps are produced in China and Turkey, it would be very easy for the counterfeit sellers in the UK to simply cut off 5 stamps from each sheet, removing this obvious signal to eBay.
This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stamp gets increases the tracking resolution for a given piece of mail both after AND before mailing. This "before mailing" part is new and opens the door for a much higher level of surveillance.
But if you think about it for more than ~10 seconds, you remember that stamps are sold in packs of 4-8 at least. They're also often sold in sheets of 50+. All this makes individual scans painful.
So you want to play the devil's advocate and make more assumptions; say, for example, "every stamp could trace back to its original pack, so only one of them needs to be scanned". But if that's the point of this panopticon move, then why put the barcode on the stamp, rather than … the pack itself?
Because you know what always gets scanned? The product's barcode. If I wanted to track people who buy stamps, I would create unique EAN13-compatible barcodes for every single pack sold, always start them with the same number space + some digits for actual different products, and voila, somewhat backwards-compatible, unique tracking on all those stamps without having to deploy a barcode on every single stamp, implement a swap-out scheme, etc.
Of course, maybe someone at GCHQ is reading my comment and thinking "fuck, why did we spend so much money on this scheme again?", but somehow I doubt it.
I think you missed the part where I’m making the argument against this being even sort of practical as a surveillance tool.
If anything all the stamps would have two ID in the barcode. One linked to the sales location (always the same) and one as a counter for the individual stamps. That would avoid having to scan every single one.
"Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier.
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so reselling stamps is not an option ?
> This card was used to buy this stamp and we have this face on camera doing it.
At best 50% of the parties to the letter are known, at worst 100%. And that is with the mail sealed.
> communicate privately
There is a piece of paper between them and the contents, and they have been handed the literal envelope to deliver. That isnt much security, and not much privacy.
If you buy stamps from a shop, perhaps a register is kept of which stamps were given to which shops.
I don't know how likely any of this is, but it can definitely make stamp purchases more traceable than without the barcodes.
In the coming cashless society, you won't be able to buy anything whatsoever without it being tied to your ID.
* See what mail is headed your way. They could have email/text/app notifications of mail that's headed towards you, including a picture of the outside of the parcel and estimated delivery dates/times.
* The ability for the receiver to pay to prioritize incoming mail. Sometimes you're sent something with slow second class mail, but then realise you really need it urgently, so could pay to 'upgrade' to express service.
* Auto upgrade all mail headed to you if you buy stuff online and hate businesses that send stuff with cheap shipping.
* Perhaps an x-ray service so you can see inside parcels - would be handy for businesses that do returns who need to check the real goods are headed their way.
* Super express services. Pay £500 and we'll dispatch an employee direct to your address with the parcel, and it'll take the driving time plus 10 minutes. Operationally it's only the same as the employee going home sick midday.
* One off redirect services. 'I'm at work today, send my parcel there'.
* Allow adding delay. 'Im on holiday, don't deliver any mail for me this week, I don't want someone breaking into my house to steal it'.
* Allow binning a letter before it even arrives - for spam and junkmail. Maybe have automated spam filters which can be enabled (and binned items can be held for a while before being actually destroyed in case of classification error).
* Allow understanding names of people at your address - eg. "Return to sender any mail addressed to Fred Smith, he no longer lives at my house"
* Notifications that the postman is 5 minutes away and has something too large for a regular letterbox. That means the postman won't have to wait so long after ringing the doorbell.
* "Letter to email" service. If you ask, they open the envelope and scan and email you a pdf of the contents. Then you get the info faster, and is also helpful for people away from home, businesses that need a mailing address but have no employees to deal with mail, etc.
All of these services would be free/cheap to implement, and each could be a chargable service that earns the company money.
Postal mail services have a massive advantage when expanding into so many fields of business - (eg. ecommerce, anything that involves having a network of people who travel every street every day). Yet none have capitalized on it.
If you have 1000 pieces of installed hardware spread around the country in urban areas, you should be able to pay the postal company to take a picture every week so you know nothing's been vandalized.
Half the country believes it should be a public service and therefore it should serve everyone even if they’re unprofitable subsidized by government money.
The remaining half believes it should be a self sustaining service that can compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx. However, they’re unwilling to accept the necessary destruction of mailing routes this would require (its hard to see how shipping letters to any non urban core would be profitable and/or how shipping prices wouldn’t rise to far above what FedEx/UPS charge today, for all the services, because of the next group).
The final, but probably most powerful, group are private logistics companies that absolutely love the fact that they can offload their unprofitable routes and services onto USPS. USPS becoming a self sustaining service would mean that all the end-user costs would rise for FedEx/UPS as well, since they will no longer be able to offload the most expensive parts of their service to USPS anymore.
Funny story: In a previous job I led a team developing the UK Post Office's self-service kiosks. Because of that work, another national post office in Asia contacted my company to investigate a similar kiosk. One of their requests -- I swear this is real -- was a "snake detector." Apparently, mailing snakes out of the country to be sold as pets is a real problem. We never quite sorted out the best way to accomplish that.
> Allow adding delay. 'Im on holiday, don't deliver any mail for me this week, I don't want someone breaking into my house to steal it'.
"Royal Mail Keepsafe" - https://www.royalmail.com/receiving/keepsafe
> Super express services
"Royal Mail Sameday" - https://www.royalmail.com/sending/uk/sameday
> Can I take my stamps to the Post Office to swap them out?
> No — you can't swap your non-barcoded stamps out at a Post Office. You will need to pick up a 'Swap Out' form and send in your non-barcoded stamps to Royal Mail (free post address on the form). Print one off our web site; contact Customer Experience and we'll post one out to you; pick one up from your local Delivery Offices' Customer Service Point.
> Please note swap out forms are not available at Post Offices.
Also, this swapout is in part to eliminate fraudulent stamps. The post office won't have the necessary high tech equipment to separate the real stamps from the (very good) fakes.
While the Post Office does sell a lot of Royal Mail products, there are some that the Post Office has deemed unprofitable, and as such, the Post Office has nothing to do with.
"The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way for innovative services for customers."
Answer my question without answering my question.
The second part seems to suggest they could add extra functions on like letting you track letter delivery as you would a parcel.
https://www.laserax.com/blog/data-matrix-vs-qr-codes
Looks like Data Matrix has higher error correction (per size) and better data density (at every size). QR Code has a higher theoretical storage capacity, larger maximum size, and multi-byte data support (rather than limited to alphanumeric), none of which applies to this use case though. It also looks like that Data Matrix may work with a lower contrast than QR Code. Both can be read from any angle.
Honestly, purely from a technical standpoint, the biggest arguments for QR Codes is their popularity/adoption, and things like that you can stylize the code itself.
Maybe I need to do more research, but on the face of it Data Matrix looks like it is technically superior.
If whatever security measures you have in place ever get broken (watermarks, holograms, digital signatures, etc), then you have a big problem.
And no security feature available today will be secure forever.
So your company or government should never issue digital or real tokens that last forever.
"If this is so important, why don't these changes apply to special stamps?"
and
"You're designing new stamps, but you're putting the Late Queen on them, not the new King?"
Royal mail is a slow company... They'll take a long time to update the design.
"I'm 90 years old and I don't know what 'download an app' or 'fill the form online' even mean. Provided you don't swap stamps at the post office, what you suggest me to do?"
But these won't even read this online-only announcement, so I guess ... screw them.
It's printed on envelopes recently arrived currently.
That's how I heard about this
The higher level might be encrypted to prevent fraud, but that would show as valid on the error correction level.
Other than that, my first guess is that the image shown there is not an actual data matrix code but a fake image made for the web site.
On a second thought, they might have used a simple pseudo-encryption (read: security through obscurity) on a lower level, such as flipping the inner pixels. But then again, this means you cannot use standard tools for anything, so I doubt it.
https://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/Royal-Mail-Mai...
The US Postal Service also uses a DataMatrix on some of their stamps, but not all. I just looked up an official specification document for the USPS codes, but couldn't find it. I did find this page dedicated to postal barcodes. It looks like the USPS ones may more accurately be called IBI Lite?
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/United_States_Postage_Meter_St...
Can anyone chime in with the security measures present on non-barcoded stamps? I have a Global Forever Stamp on the desk in front of me, and there's nothing that is visible to the naked-eye.
While we're on the subject of barcodes and shipping, check out MaxiCode! I've scanned hundreds of thousands of those little bulls-eyes.
USPS seems to be lax on postage issues... at least some years ago there was some reporting that they very rarely actually scan (and thus mark as used) meter stamps and so you can get away with using them multiple times in practice. I think this is just because of not wanting to spend the money to install the meter validation equipment on sorting machines, since they already have the IMB to use for routing. I suspect they just don't see a lot of actual issues with counterfeiting
Pitney Bowes is much of what I call the "postal industrial complex" - large aspects of USPS technology are completely contracted to Pitney Bowes and a few other companies like Endicia. Pretty much every form of "electronic postage" in the US, including purchased directly from USPS, is managed by Pitney Bowes or Endicia, not USPS (Post Offices used to use an Endicia product for shipping postage, not sure if they still do).
Presumably they would like to go 100% to the new workflow in their sorting centres. A longer swap period means more expensive equipment sat there doing nothing or longer period of time supporting two different workflows.
Also the distribution of stamps held; people who post a lot - 0 swaps needed. People who hoard - have multiple years supply. People who dont post often at all but have stamps sat around - 10 years supply assuming you can find where that 10 pack of stamps is.
6-12 months to restock all outlets and have companies wind down their supplies of old stamps, and a good amount of time to test the new workflow on an increasing volume, while still being able to back off if the system blows up.
- sender data
- recipient data (POSSIBLY GPS etc included)
- paid fees
Aside of any human-readable information. That's might simplify shipping process much and allow quicker operation between different countries address formats having a "QR generators platform" who take care of the differences up front. For instance generating proper human-readable addresses for both sender and recipient locations according to local postal service rules.
The swap out thing is a bit weird and clunky -- I mean, who's paying attention to this. Gonna have to be a major PR campaign about it.
European countries did the same when the Euro came and they made a ton of money by being able to devaluate all stamp collections...
(you have to consider that stamp collection was a huge thing but now is no longer so that when stamp collectors die many collections enter the market...)