Overview

MiniCheck ID aims to minimize the losses due to fake IDs such as the Drivers Licenses and State IDs. The application empowers a retail outlet’s sales representative by providing features for ID verification and validation.

In order to develop a solution that would be usable nation wide the recommendations proposed by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators for magnetic stripe and barcode IDs are explored and based on these a flexible solution has been designed.

The application extracts the encoded information from magnetic stripe or barcode, parses the data and saves it to the database. In case of magnetic ID information is retrieved just by swiping the card on the reader whereas for the barcode cards image is scanned using standard card scanner and a third part software [Clear Image Software Development Kit] is used to convert that image to raw data.

For magnetic stripe cards a revolutionary technology called MagnePrint developed by Magtek Inc is used to validate the authenticity of a card. Magnetic stripe are constructed (naturally by the production process) of billions of particles of varying size and shape forming a unique pattern (these exceptional patterns are as distinct as a fingerprint); this technology captures these patterns. Magtek has manufactured special purpose readers that can interpret these patterns and convert them into MagnePrint signature. Our application uses MagTek’s web interface to access and validate the MagnePrint signatures. One area of potential enhancement is the validation of MagnePrint signature from within the application using API calls.

The application also provides a feature for printing the stored information in the database through a report. This report can be exported in various formats such as MS Excel, MS Word, etc.