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Comment by dhekir | Hacker News Reader

What prevents factories from implementing some online verification mechanism for serial IDs? At least for products which cost a few hundred bucks, this should be economically feasible, no? Then, before buying, you could scan a QR code and have the site tell you if it's a valid serial.

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Some do, Kingston for example[1]. Although I don't know how they defend against serial numbers being copied too.

http://www.kingston.com/en/support/product_verification

If the same serial number keeps popping up, you can generally assume it's been compromised.

I had always presumed this was where NFC would gain adoption within $BrandName.

One could easily and non-invasively (preserving packaging) check authenticity against $BrandName's website. It would cost less than printing UUIDs outside the packaging and maybe make a dent in knock-offs by both increasing cost of reproduction and fear of being 'shamed' by others being able to validate your items in-person. It would also allow Marketing folks to provide backstorys on their products and a way to directly interface with people realizing their goods are fake...

Then all the counterfeiters have to have is one valid serial number, and print it on all their products. The online lookup says it is real!

If we're talking about online lookup, then there's a simple countermeasure: if the system has already seen the same serial number 50 times, or it sees the serial number in Shanghai then fifteen minutes later in Frankfurt, or any number of other heuristics, it'll report that it's a fake. True, this might inconvenience the one legitimate customer who had that original serial number.

Also, you need to make sure that the serial numbers are long and random-looking, so that they are not auto-generated.

I don't know if this will inconvenience the one customer unless they bought it used. Someone with connections to the counterfeiters would have owned that valid product for some short period of time and probably kept it.

Just link it to some kind of database like the hard drive manufacturers do.

A friend is working on something very similar, with the exception that instead of a QR code, it's something that requires special printing equipment.

IIRC nokia used to do this with their batteries.

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