I have recently renewed my Kentucky drivers license and recieved one of the new “high tech” cards with a barcode on the back, in short i don’t trust them, is there a way to read the barcode on the back, using a scanner maybe?
If it’s a standard 3 of 9 barcode, any barcode scanner opught to be able to read it. If it’s a proprietary code, you’re mostly SOL. If you know someone who works at Radio Shack and is fairly computer literate, they can use the POS and read it into an instance of Notepad, or a text input box on a webform.
With a bar code reader, I presume.
In particular, a barcode reader which knows what format the barcode is in. Apparently, there are a couple standards used in the States. Check out a vendor site for more info.
What don’t you trust about the bar code?
Is there anything you don’t trust about the Driver’s License Number that they assigned to you? Why would the bar code be any different?
If you do get a scanner as suggested above, my guess is that it would tell you very little that isn’t already legible on the license, and that the bar code is just to prevent forgeries.
This might be a slight hijack, and I beg your indulgence, but, wouldn’t reading a barcode just give you a set of numbers? I mean, isn’t a barcode just an easier way to access a database? I would think a barcode without a database to check the number against would be a useless string of numbers.
Just curious here.
A barcode can encode nearly anything, depending on the format. A 3 of 9 barcode, for instance, can encode any 7-bit ASCII string. It can be a name, a number, a lookup code or nearly anything else.
According to the state, it’s a 2D barcode, like a checkerboard. Here’s a picture.So most conventional readers won’t do anything with it. Connecticut did the same thing with theirs.
Usually when they do with driver’s licenses, it contains all the data from the front. The idea is to prevent tampering.
Let me add that I’m curious as well. Just how do those barcodes work? Is each digit assigned a consistent series of fat or skinny lines? How do you tell when one digit ends and another begins?
Here is an article on how UPC codes work. Other formats, such as the common 3 of 9 code are similar.
Thanks for all your replies as this was my first post. yes the code is a 2-d code, and i have tried software by a company called axtell that reads the barcode from an image file, but it will not read it, it’s response is “barcode not found”, it is supposed to read 2-d codes, perhaps it is encryted somehow? As to the question of why i want to know whats in the code it just looks to my untrained eye like a lot of information, more than what is on the front could be stored there, (and i am just curious) 
They do this in Georgia, too, though our barcode thingie is a little smaller. They take thumbprints when we do our licenses, and I’ve always wondered if maybe that was somehow represented in the bar code.
In Ohio they put a mag strip on the back. A number of years ago, a bar owner wanted a computer to display a red or green screen when checking ID’s. I setup the computer and wrote the program, everything on the front of the license, excepting the SSN was in that mag strip.
A 2d bar code would easily carry that information.
Dan