Tracking and Counterfeit detection are aspects of supply chain that differ in scope of technology. Retrofitting a tracking technology like barcode, qrcode (2D Barcode), RFID, NFC to solve counterfeiting is a misuse, if not outright abuse.
Active silicon-based technologies
Silicon based active technologies like RFID, NFC have evolved over time providing for scanning using a smartphone in few cases on few phones. Non-clonable version of these allow single-write of information similar to the days of CD (compact disc) where the cheaper version only for writing only once. The expensive version allowed for multiple writes (CD-RW) which was a value for money for regular user.
Non-clonable RFID or NFC as brand protection strategy
Non-clonable or single-write RFID or NFC are as the name prevents re-write and thereby reuse of the same tag. They may even support information to be stored in encrypted format. The question though is - How does it prevent Counterfeiters from duplicating these?
Tracking technologies are ...
... outright clonable because they are not designed to be otherwise.
A barcode or qrcode can be photocopied or cloned without the ability to differentiate the original and the cloned ones. Information from NFC and RFID can similarly be cloned, even the encrypted ones. The information visible in the reader will be the encrypted information without any change in coded content. Any number of copies that are then coded onto the non-clonable tags (because they work out cheaper for counterfeiters as well) will be verifiable easily using the reader or app that decodes the content to verify its authenticity. Since this is a raw-transfer of information or the digital image (similar to hard disk cloning) into the same hardware (type of NFC or RFID), information is stored evenly without corruption.
Alerting scan of dead NFC
Any silicon based technology is just a circuit with no visibility into its originality. This is an advantage that helps those in the fake business. As with any technology, things do not always work, and that is an excuse to serve dead NFC/RFID or even an image (with circuit diagram) printed onto it. Of course they will never scan (we haven\'t reached there in our technology yet!), thereby not alerting the verifying customer and even the brand owner.
With no reports of counterfeit detection all may seem going the right way in the fight against counterfeit using a tracking technology. But it isn\'t, and it will reflect by way of no change in revenue or product volume.
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Purpose built Anti-Counterfeit & Tracking technology
SCoT leverages tracking technologies like barcode and qrcode, but only for the purpose they serve - item identification. The security of the label is though based on RUDS technology which generates per-piece unique random signature or encoding while being non-clonable. Without use of covert or overt security features, only SCoT smartphone app serves as the only decoder of the label, making it impossible to digitally re-create it. The security is so strong that even if we were to advertise the unique security signature, it will have to be reverse engineered to recreate the per-piece unique label.
The Active Intelligence distributed server technology, ScAI, helps detects clones that is an impossible possibility using specialized scanning. ScAI has been designed in a way to even detect cloned version of simple tracking technologies.
With random signature running into billions, finding the exact match for a single unit and then crafting a new label is more difficult than cracking a 2048-bit digital key.
Stop experimenting with multiple technologies and adopt SCoT - the trusted security packaging technology with built-in track-trace usable across packaging and use cases.
