I have a simple technique to detect counterfeit products.The Product may be a medicine, branded garments, or anything may be even a willow wood bat. First we have to associate a 15 digit Alpha Numeric character with every product. These 15 digit alpha numeric character needs to be unique for a company, One company need not verify whether it clashes with other company's code. Two different companies can have same code. This code will be hidden. Once you buy a product, you have to scratch this hidden code and sms it to the company's number. The company will send u reply with complete information about the product.With the name of the product, Price and manufacturing date and expiry date(in case of medicine) or size(in case of garments). If these details match, the product is original or else counterfeit.This alpha numeric code can be a QR code, in countries well connected through internet and a huge population uses smart phones. This QR code should also be hidden and it needs to be scratched to see it. You buy a product, pay money, get the bill and go home, then check whether it is original or counterfeit. If it is counterfeit, call the company and the company should give you money for helping it to find counterfeit products. Each company will have a phone number to sms. And QR code can be used to first detect the company 's link through some part of the code and then remaining code sends this Alpha Numeric Code to verify its authenticity. So all u have to do is scan QR code. It will send you all details of the product. If there are crores of a product for a single company like pharmaceutical companies. You can give different phone numbers to different products. In case a company has a few variety of products, but each variety is sold in huge numbers, then we can add product number in the details sent through sms. But definitely,all the product details should be sent along with the product number.
So, How are we going to tackle brute force attack. Some one sits with a cell phone and tries random number to a specific product say penicillin. He will get the details of the product and put those details in a counterfeit product. To avoid this we will allow only 5 wrong entries from a cell phone in a month. Above that it will be blocked. Another attack, take a used medicine and put those details in a counterfeit product. To avoid this, whenever somebody messages a code, only first time it will show as a genuine product. Next time somebody asks details with the same number, it will show "This product is already sold out. May be a counterfeit product". Every time a number asks with either wrong code or already used code, Customer care will contact the consumer and investigate the issue. We will record the code and the phone number combo every time for future purposes like big data.
QR code is just for convenience, it will do the same thing, send sms to the company's number with the code. The convenience is you don't need to type the code or phone number. You scan and automatically it will send sms. It will not work on tablets. Only cell phones.
Suppose. say in the future, everybody has started using this Counterfeit Product Detector. Some bogus company issues its own CPD and if you scan CPD, it will go to their network and it will display information about a counterfeit product as a genuine one. To avoid that, If u scan the QR code, it will send 2 messages, first to regulator, who will send the company's name in the first SMS and then the second message will come from the company which will tell about its details. If you don't have smart phone , you have to send 2 sms one to regulator asking for company's name, then send the CPD Alpha numeric code to company's number.
Definitely in the future( 5 or 10 years), everybody is going to hold a smartphone. All they have to do is download the CPD app from the regulator, scan the QR code and remaining will be done automatically. There is one small feature, i thought of can be useful for CPD app. Suppose you mistakenly scan the CPD code you have already scanned from the same device, the app will store the CPD code u have already scanned using that device and will not send SMS and responds to the user that u have already scanned this device and shows its details. There are so many things like this you can do. I stop here and let everybody take this is as a seed idea and develop this plan.
So, How are we going to tackle brute force attack. Some one sits with a cell phone and tries random number to a specific product say penicillin. He will get the details of the product and put those details in a counterfeit product. To avoid this we will allow only 5 wrong entries from a cell phone in a month. Above that it will be blocked. Another attack, take a used medicine and put those details in a counterfeit product. To avoid this, whenever somebody messages a code, only first time it will show as a genuine product. Next time somebody asks details with the same number, it will show "This product is already sold out. May be a counterfeit product". Every time a number asks with either wrong code or already used code, Customer care will contact the consumer and investigate the issue. We will record the code and the phone number combo every time for future purposes like big data.
QR code is just for convenience, it will do the same thing, send sms to the company's number with the code. The convenience is you don't need to type the code or phone number. You scan and automatically it will send sms. It will not work on tablets. Only cell phones.
Suppose. say in the future, everybody has started using this Counterfeit Product Detector. Some bogus company issues its own CPD and if you scan CPD, it will go to their network and it will display information about a counterfeit product as a genuine one. To avoid that, If u scan the QR code, it will send 2 messages, first to regulator, who will send the company's name in the first SMS and then the second message will come from the company which will tell about its details. If you don't have smart phone , you have to send 2 sms one to regulator asking for company's name, then send the CPD Alpha numeric code to company's number.
Definitely in the future( 5 or 10 years), everybody is going to hold a smartphone. All they have to do is download the CPD app from the regulator, scan the QR code and remaining will be done automatically. There is one small feature, i thought of can be useful for CPD app. Suppose you mistakenly scan the CPD code you have already scanned from the same device, the app will store the CPD code u have already scanned using that device and will not send SMS and responds to the user that u have already scanned this device and shows its details. There are so many things like this you can do. I stop here and let everybody take this is as a seed idea and develop this plan.
