Security barcodes and other “actionable” barcodes have become commonplace as a consequence of the recent ubiquity of mobile phones equipped with high-quality cameras. In this paper, we provide methods for quantifying the entropy of the embedded barcode data, assuming methods other than the standards-specified error correcting code (ECC) approaches can be adopted. Entropy, which reduces the likelihood of a fraudulent agent being able to “guess” correct barcodes, is measured directly using a variety of novel algorithms and applied to large sets of barcodes. Our data, however, show that removing ECC provides the additional advantage of increasing entropy. Thus, all other settings (data payload size, printing technology, substrate used, etc.) being equal, eliminating the ECC will increase the security of the information content.