To this day, most important documents are still issued on paper. The security is based on the fact that the cost of creating a counterfeit must be unattractive for counterfeiters in relation to the expected profit. This results typically in using expensive printing equipment and substrate. This work introduces an approach which evaluates paper documents using any internet enabled device with a camera and a web browser like smartphones and tablets. Optical character recognition (OCR) is used to make text machine readable after the document is recognized and rectified. Digital signatures are then used to verify the authenticity and integrity of the data. Beyond that, the requirements of privacy, robustness and usability are satisfied. By using JAB Code, a high-capacity matrix code, the data to be verified can be stored directly on the document without having to use a database. This brings key advantages compared to database-bound systems in terms of security and privacy. The use of OCR achieves high usability.
This work discusses document security, use of OCR, and integrity verification related to printed documents. Since the underlying applications are usually documents containing sensitive personal data, a solution that does not require the entire data to be stored in a database is the most compatible. In order to allow verification to be performed by anyone, it is necessary that all the data required for this is contained on the document itself. The approach must be able to cope with different layouts so that the layout does not have to be adapted for each document. In the following, we present a concept and its implementation that allows every smartphone user to verify the authenticity and integrity of a document.