Hewlett-Packard, a major, multi-national technology company based in the U.S., has been entrenched in an anti-counterfeit campaign for the past four years. The company has been plagued by reports of fraudulent product appearing all over the world, most of which serves no other purpose than to put a dent in the company’s otherwise pristine reputation. To date, HP has recovered more than 20 million counterfeit products. Many of the falsified products take the form of ink cartridges for HP’s line of printers. To combat this counterfeit, the company is turning to QR codes.
HP will be stamping QR codes on all of their consumable products in the future and will join the holographic stickers the company already uses to determine authenticity. The codes will act as a form of quality assurance, letting consumers know that what they are buying comes directly from HP. Scanning the code will take smart phone users to a mobile website that will notify consumers that the product is authentic.
Using QR codes as a form of security may not be the best approach to the situation. The codes can be easily generated online and can be used to link to any web address. HP is taking the precaution of keeping the web addresses for their products hidden, but there are ways to find out this information for those willing to spend a little extra time digging through the Internet. Once found, the web addresses can be embedded into codes and placed on counterfeit product, essentially nullifying the security measures of HP.
