14 ms·

Fake IDs in the age of the internet

157 points by aaron695 10y ago

Arcten 10y ago
I've been interested in this topic for a while. The article was fairly good but I did have a few minor quibbles. For one, ordering from IDGod (the vendor in the story) is known to be very reliable. If packages get stopped at customs, a customer can contact support to get a replacement shipped at no charge. Additionally, the advanced scanner BarZapp is pretty much a non-issue. Almost any ID purchased from vendors on the subreddit mentioned in the article will pass those easily.
- SamBam 10y ago
  How will a fake id pass BarZapp? According to the article (I know nothing about this, so could be wrong) it looks up the id in a database and returns the name and dob of the owner. How could the made-up name be in the database? Or are they cloning existing IDs, and the buyer doesn't get a choice in the name?
  - Arcten 10y ago
    It's neither. All BarZapp does is read the barcode and check that it contains reasonable information and it formatted according to the standards. Vendors have figured out proper formatting so they look appropriate to BarZapp. Of course, no fake id will pass actual lookup in a database. Except of course cloned IDs, which are extremely rare in my experience. I've heard of stories of someone with a stolen DMV database who would sell fakes with real information for about $700 each, but I've never seen it myself, and no reasonable vendor doing anything like that would be selling through the clearweb.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
      At that point you're talking about identity theft which is a whole different ballgame...
  - tgokh 10y ago
    I believe the apps only pull whatever information is in the barcode on the back of the idea - only law enforcement can actually check the ID against the DMV database. I scanned the 2-D barcode on my license using a generic barcode reader on my phone, and it's a PDF417 barcode that contains all the information that's printed on my id (number, name, address, license type, physical descriptors, dates, organ donor) as well as a few other fields (revision number of the card format, and an inventory control number that looks like the concatenation of the DL number, state name, license type, and some other fields)
  - xkcd-sucks 10y ago
    If BarZapp did do database lookups, it seems like a route to cloning part of a DMV registry...
  - VLM 10y ago
    The situation is crazier yet more logical than it appears. How do you prove someone once showed you a fake ID? Well, back in the $1 per shot polaroid / kodak instamatic era, you didn't. So the fake ID owner got away with it and bar owner got punished, which is the only reason bars cared about carefully checking fake IDs. Now with a machine the bar has a fighting chance in court, the police verbally claim the bar served an underage patron, and the police provide a person residing in the city who is underage, but there is nothing in common between those two people, your honor here is a copy of the patron's license clearly showing he's 22 at that time and there's no legal record of my patron ever having been charged with a fake ID infraction and my patron is not the same person as the supposed police witness, so, your honor I request you dismiss the case K thx bye. There is also the 3rd party to blame, if a bouncer knows some punk who gets drunk and starts fights, oh so sorry your ID failed the scan, now go away. "No point arguing with me, buddy, you need a better fake ID, yell at the guy who sold it to you".
    - moftz 10y ago
      A lot of bars in my college town are starting to require two forms of ID before they let you in. One must be a driver's license but the other can be your student ID card or a credit card. I'm sure it would be easy to fake our student ID cards but for the most part, this rule works well. Some bars are known for letting in minors. Their bouncers are inexperienced or just don't care. Every now and then those bars get a fine and they put someone experienced out front and give them a UV flashlight. That guy will collect enough fake IDs until the bar isn't making enough money so they will bring the first bouncers out and rake in more money from the underaged patrons until they get another fine. I've seen people get let in using the worst fake IDs I've ever seen and I've seen people rejected using real IDs. It all depends on the bouncer's experience and how much the bar owner cares about not letting in underaged people.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    ID lookups against databases are actually pretty rare. The information is embedded in the barcode, and not in a cryptographically secure way.
driverdan 10y ago
I'm a bit disappointed in this article. Interviewing someone who bought fake IDs and a small scale seller from 1994 isn't that insightful. He should have tracked down a current seller and interviewed them. Prices have dropped in the past 10 years which I assume means increased competition. It would be interesting to hear how that has affected the business. I'm also curious about the techniques they use. When I was selling IDs 13 years ago it was teslin, PVC card printers, and Alps printers. I assume the Alps printers are no longer used since they went out of production in 2003 or 2004. A lot of IDs are still fairly easy to replicate. The hardest thing is a real hologram which most IDs don't have.
- Arcten 10y ago
  Teslin and PVC are still big, although some states are using polycarbonate as well. Real holograms got a lot easier. IDGod (among other vendors), apart from selling IDs, also sells bulk holograms, so most vendors on Reddit now have them. The bigger hurdles are the higher security states with perforations, raised signatures, windows, etc.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mdp 10y ago
  Hah, I also had the Alps for the same reason. I always wondered what percentage of their sales was to kids making fake IDs.
post_break 10y ago
This reminds me of back in the day when someone broke into the Ohio DMV and stole the machine that made the IDs and starting making exact "fake" IDs.
- scurvy 10y ago
  Before the days of prevalent computers and searchable databases, one would just take someone else's information to the DMV and get a real ID with their info.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    In the 70-80's, we made them with colored stock paper, hand-drawn seals, and rub on letters and border lines. You would make them much larger than the real deal, then take photos and reduce the size. That masked any imperfections. The back side was typically just text, so we could photocopy that. Insert the photo, and find a high end laminating machine. Oh, and fake a neighboring state ID so it's less critical to have it perfect.
  - curun1r 10y ago
    You didn't even need to use someone else's information, you could just use your own with a different DoB. Growing up, my "fake" ID was my passport. When I applied for it, they read my birth year wrong (I guess my 7 wasn't too legible and they thought it was a 2). I could barely pass for my own age, let alone 5 years older, but it worked most of the time. All my friends ended up using the flaw that I'd inadvertently exposed when their fakes got confiscated. It was just cheaper and more reliable to use an actual government-issued ID.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  I think this is why Indiana quit printing ID's in the county offices. They are now printed in a central location in Indianapolis and arrive in the mail.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    That may be part of it, but in Texas (where they do the same thing), they use the mail-back as a way to (partially) verify your physical address.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
The mass use of fake IDs of this sort is a bizarrely American problem. In the UK, you're considered an adult at age 18. Most (aside from the unfortunate 17-year-olds) university students can legally purchase alcohol, smoke, or gamble if they so choose. But we don't have MADD, I guess.
- walshemj 10y ago
  Yes and there is even push back against under 21 sqadies /grunts being able to drink - you can put your life on the line for your country but cant get a beer
  - post_break 10y ago
    Same thing with weapons. Go shoot automatic rifles with the government, oh you want to buy hand gun ammunition? Sorry you can't, have to be 21.
    - 0xfeba 10y ago
      Depends on the state, but Federal law does require you to be 21 or older to purchase a handgun. Ammunition can be sold without any background checks or ID checks in some states.
      - post_break 10y ago
        21 to purchase from a retail, I believe it's still 18 to purchase from an individual, making it even more backwards.
        dTal 10y ago
        Is that really so backwards? Seems to me that a personal sale is a more intimate exchange and it might be expected that the seller vets the buyer a bit more carefully than your average retail transaction, thus justifying the lower age restriction.
        10y ago
realusername 10y ago
Is that seriously how the driving license looks like in the US? It looks like a student card, I understand why it's easy to duplicate now.
- amyjess 10y ago
  It looks easier than it is. There are holograms all over the cards that don't photograph well.
- swimfar 10y ago
  Compared to what? I've seen much simpler driver's licenses from other countries. Up until recently (2013 maybe) the French driver's license was literally a piece of pink paper with a picture glued to it. http://flawlessfakeids.com/wp-content/uploads/French-Fake-Driving-Licence-2.jpg http://flawlessfakeids.com/wp-content/uploads/French-Fake-Dr...
  - thomasmarcelis 10y ago
    But a drivers license is not a valid proof of identification here
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Surely unlicensed drivers are at least as valid a concern. Most fake IDs I've seen are non-driver IDs.
  - danielbln 10y ago
    Compared to Germany for example with a bunch of holograms and whatnot: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/DE_Licence_2013_Front.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/DE_Licen... In contrast to e.g. the French, our drivers licence is a valid means of identification though.
    - eli 10y ago
      That looks similar to many of the new US state IDs due to increased security requirements of REAL ID. My Washington, DC license has a holograms and a neat translucent panel where you can see my photo if you hold it up to the light. I would guess it is very hard to fake.
tclancy 10y ago
About 5 years ago I went to a getaway-type bachelor party. Along with us were the groom's future brother-in-law and two state police officers (friends of the groom, it wasn't that exciting a trip). At one point in the night, the brother-in-law (18) hands his fake ID over to the cops, they both stare at it and go, "Nope, no way I could tell that was fake." Ever since I've been waiting for the US to suck it up and drop the drinking age back to 18, highway funds be damned.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Don't hold your breath.
iplaw 10y ago
A friend of mine from the University of Texas was arrested by Federal Agents while eating dinner in the cafeteria at Jester dormitory. He had purchased a card printing machine, a hologram printer, a blue portrait backdrop, etc. and set up shop in his dorm room. He made quite a bit of money before the law caught up to him and, despite being older and wiser, still has that felony charge hanging over him. A disgruntled customer who was turned away from a bar on 6th Street snitched. Nevermind that this kid looked 15 and it wasn't the ID that sold out his true age. I am confident that these shipments from IDGod are being tracked and recorded, and a bust of the customers and/or IDGod is in the works.
- SamBam 10y ago
  I feel like a good seller is probably also someone who is choosy about his clients, and doesn't sell to baby-faced 15 year olds.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    And probably doesn't keep his equipment in his dorm room in plain sight.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  Lesson #1: Stick with your ideal customers because a customer who isn't a good fit for your product will inevitably experience problems and decide to blame you for it. This is why a refund policy makes sense but even that could be avoided by sticking to rule #1.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
SamBam 10y ago
> in my case, hidden inside a box of red chopsticks. Though I reflexively tossed the utensils out with a glut of election mailers and Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, I soon realized they just might contain what I’d been waiting over two months for. This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?
- rsync 10y ago
  "This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?" Actually, every two months or so we will receive an amazon package with some item that we never ordered and is not in our purchase queue, etc. Something we never even looked at. I used to think this was just a mistaken fulfillment, etc., but now I think it's intentional. I think vendors are mining purchase history to determine likely new customers for item X and then sending a "mistaken" shipment to introduce the product. I have no evidence to back up that conclusion.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    If you don't already know, you should be really careful about this. It's something which scammers do once they've got hold of your card; websites often require you to purchase something shipped to the billing address already on your card before changing the address.
- garethsprice 10y ago
  Journalists and PR people regularly get all kinds of samplers and swag in the mail, so it's not unlikely.
The_Hoff 10y ago
> The options for payment were Bitcoin and Western Union; since I’m neither a Russian hacker nor a Dark Web impresario, I opted for the latter. This is so frustrating for me to read. Western Union has its own set of problems and its users throw money away on fees, but why is cryptocurrency being thought of as a only being used by Russian Hackers and Dark Web impresarios?
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Because most people who use it are in one of those groups or doing business with someone who is. It is, of course, an unfair stereotype. It's just as popular among Chinese hackers.
- BEEdwards 10y ago
  Because they accept it as currency when your local convenience store doesn't. Who you can give the money too is generally a good indication of what it's used for and for better or worse bitcoin is for hording and illicit purchases.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  > and its users throw money away on fees, Have you seen the transaction fees for Bitcoin lately?
  - flyingfences 10y ago
    Still cheaper than WU. A typical BTC txn fee is somewhere in the ballpark of $0.50 right now. The author of this article paid WU a txn fee of $14 if I'm reading it right.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- xkcd-sucks 10y ago
  Also, why isn't Western Union thought of as only being used by illegal immigrants and Craigslist scammers?
ben_jones 10y ago
Several of my friends are college bartenders who check these IDs regularly. Most fakes are easy to spot but its generally more of a hassle to actually bounce someone then let them get by. If a bar gets any heat, like a higher percentage of incidents outside in a given month, they'll step up their rejections. Attractive people, and specifically attractive women, are let in much more often.
arprocter 10y ago
Interesting that they mention Boston - along with NC it's the only place where my green card has been refused as an acceptable form of ID. I have no idea why a federally issued photo ID with my name, DoB and photo on it apparently isn't enough to prove my age. As a Brit, it amuses me that there are apparently so many balding 20 year olds with grey beards in the US that I am suspicious. They also don't seem to like my SO's GA driver's license in Boston. Edit - I should add that the second time we went back to the place which wouldn't take my green card as ID they didn't ID us at all
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  There's a reason Ben Franklin moved to Philly.
  - arprocter 10y ago
    Ben 'Silence Dogood' Franklin - could've be one of the first fakes?
- Fripplebubby 10y ago
  Boston is the real deal when it comes to ID crackdowns. About 150k college students so some tens of thousands of fake IDs, plus a history of blue laws. I believe that legally they are even allowed to refuse legitimate out-of-state US drivers' licenses (most places do not do this, but they can). Foreign passports also can be refused. And that's not even counting the notorious "box scanners" which, to my knowledge, are yet to be beaten reliably with a fake...
  - arprocter 10y ago
    Good to know - I've yet to have my passport refused anywhere, but it's annoying to have to carry it around, let alone potentially lose it on a night out A document that permits someone to enter the country isn't acceptable to prove their age. Wacky.
  - Fripplebubby 10y ago
    Meanwhile in the UK I have had many places accept my expired US license from a rural state most have not even heard of. Once at a supermarket, a cashier asked me for ID and I absent mindedly said "No thanks". He was satisfied with that answer, and I didn't realize what I had said until I had already left with my drinks in hand.
fivestar 10y ago
So many interesting threads to discuss on this matter. The problem in the US is too many people hate that others have freedom--hence the MADD group's desire to remove any semblance of fun in order to make everyone else as miserable as they are. The US drinking age, if there should be one at all, should revert to 18 and the ID problem would pretty much disappear. I can't describe all the ways that people have become emotionally and socially stunted simply because we have too many laws making typical, normal human behavior illegal in order so that some company can earn higher profits (think lawyers, think insurance industry). They've ruined our way of life and we need it back. We are a nation in hiding, ducking too many laws, too many cops, and too many restrictions. I'm not saying people should be free to drink and drive, but I am saying that all the laws limiting behavior have had tremendous negative consequences. On to the lowly driver's license. Once upon a time, possessing one demonstrated that one could competently operate a motor vehicle. No more. Today, most "driver's" can't drive worth a damn, and the "license" they hold is an over-regulated, poorly implemented national identity card that you must have in order to get on a flight or enter certain Federal facilities. It's utterly stupid. Identity cards in general are dumb and over-wrought contrivances that are mostly totalitarian in nature "your papers please"--how soon we forget. And now we have RealID, which is even worse, and soon there will be a massive data breach of all that RealID information the feds are hanging on to with all the attendant negative consequences for the people who willingly surrendered themselves to big government. That there exists a thriving illegal Id industry in the 21st century makes me happy because it means the trap of tyranny isn't completed shut--there is still resistance, still a means of escape. People, Americans especially, and HN readers most notably, need to forego their fears and re-learn what it means to be free again. Free doesn't mean "subject to incalculable bureaucratic restrictions on one's life." Quite the contrary. Be free, resist the bullshit! The other, related matter that irks me is the background check. Never was there are more worthless, false sense of security than the background check. But that is a matter for another day.

157 points by aaron695 10y ago

I've been interested in this topic for a while. The article was fairly good but I did have a few minor quibbles. For one, ordering from IDGod (the vendor in the story) is known to be very reliable. If packages get stopped at customs, a customer can contact support to get a replacement shipped at no charge. Additionally, the advanced scanner BarZapp is pretty much a non-issue. Almost any ID purchased from vendors on the subreddit mentioned in the article will pass those easily.

SamBam 10y ago
How will a fake id pass BarZapp? According to the article (I know nothing about this, so could be wrong) it looks up the id in a database and returns the name and dob of the owner. How could the made-up name be in the database? Or are they cloning existing IDs, and the buyer doesn't get a choice in the name?
- Arcten 10y ago
  It's neither. All BarZapp does is read the barcode and check that it contains reasonable information and it formatted according to the standards. Vendors have figured out proper formatting so they look appropriate to BarZapp. Of course, no fake id will pass actual lookup in a database. Except of course cloned IDs, which are extremely rare in my experience. I've heard of stories of someone with a stolen DMV database who would sell fakes with real information for about $700 each, but I've never seen it myself, and no reasonable vendor doing anything like that would be selling through the clearweb.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
    At that point you're talking about identity theft which is a whole different ballgame...
- tgokh 10y ago
  I believe the apps only pull whatever information is in the barcode on the back of the idea - only law enforcement can actually check the ID against the DMV database. I scanned the 2-D barcode on my license using a generic barcode reader on my phone, and it's a PDF417 barcode that contains all the information that's printed on my id (number, name, address, license type, physical descriptors, dates, organ donor) as well as a few other fields (revision number of the card format, and an inventory control number that looks like the concatenation of the DL number, state name, license type, and some other fields)
- xkcd-sucks 10y ago
  If BarZapp did do database lookups, it seems like a route to cloning part of a DMV registry...
- VLM 10y ago
  The situation is crazier yet more logical than it appears. How do you prove someone once showed you a fake ID? Well, back in the $1 per shot polaroid / kodak instamatic era, you didn't. So the fake ID owner got away with it and bar owner got punished, which is the only reason bars cared about carefully checking fake IDs. Now with a machine the bar has a fighting chance in court, the police verbally claim the bar served an underage patron, and the police provide a person residing in the city who is underage, but there is nothing in common between those two people, your honor here is a copy of the patron's license clearly showing he's 22 at that time and there's no legal record of my patron ever having been charged with a fake ID infraction and my patron is not the same person as the supposed police witness, so, your honor I request you dismiss the case K thx bye. There is also the 3rd party to blame, if a bouncer knows some punk who gets drunk and starts fights, oh so sorry your ID failed the scan, now go away. "No point arguing with me, buddy, you need a better fake ID, yell at the guy who sold it to you".
  - moftz 10y ago
    A lot of bars in my college town are starting to require two forms of ID before they let you in. One must be a driver's license but the other can be your student ID card or a credit card. I'm sure it would be easy to fake our student ID cards but for the most part, this rule works well. Some bars are known for letting in minors. Their bouncers are inexperienced or just don't care. Every now and then those bars get a fine and they put someone experienced out front and give them a UV flashlight. That guy will collect enough fake IDs until the bar isn't making enough money so they will bring the first bouncers out and rake in more money from the underaged patrons until they get another fine. I've seen people get let in using the worst fake IDs I've ever seen and I've seen people rejected using real IDs. It all depends on the bouncer's experience and how much the bar owner cares about not letting in underaged people.
- closeparen 10y ago
  ID lookups against databases are actually pretty rare. The information is embedded in the barcode, and not in a cryptographically secure way.

driverdan 10y ago

I'm a bit disappointed in this article. Interviewing someone who bought fake IDs and a small scale seller from 1994 isn't that insightful. He should have tracked down a current seller and interviewed them. Prices have dropped in the past 10 years which I assume means increased competition. It would be interesting to hear how that has affected the business. I'm also curious about the techniques they use. When I was selling IDs 13 years ago it was teslin, PVC card printers, and Alps printers. I assume the Alps printers are no longer used since they went out of production in 2003 or 2004. A lot of IDs are still fairly easy to replicate. The hardest thing is a real hologram which most IDs don't have.

Arcten 10y ago
Teslin and PVC are still big, although some states are using polycarbonate as well. Real holograms got a lot easier. IDGod (among other vendors), apart from selling IDs, also sells bulk holograms, so most vendors on Reddit now have them. The bigger hurdles are the higher security states with perforations, raised signatures, windows, etc.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mdp 10y ago
Hah, I also had the Alps for the same reason. I always wondered what percentage of their sales was to kids making fake IDs.

post_break 10y ago

This reminds me of back in the day when someone broke into the Ohio DMV and stole the machine that made the IDs and starting making exact "fake" IDs.

scurvy 10y ago
Before the days of prevalent computers and searchable databases, one would just take someone else's information to the DMV and get a real ID with their info.
- tyingq 10y ago
  In the 70-80's, we made them with colored stock paper, hand-drawn seals, and rub on letters and border lines. You would make them much larger than the real deal, then take photos and reduce the size. That masked any imperfections. The back side was typically just text, so we could photocopy that. Insert the photo, and find a high end laminating machine. Oh, and fake a neighboring state ID so it's less critical to have it perfect.
- curun1r 10y ago
  You didn't even need to use someone else's information, you could just use your own with a different DoB. Growing up, my "fake" ID was my passport. When I applied for it, they read my birth year wrong (I guess my 7 wasn't too legible and they thought it was a 2). I could barely pass for my own age, let alone 5 years older, but it worked most of the time. All my friends ended up using the flaw that I'd inadvertently exposed when their fakes got confiscated. It was just cheaper and more reliable to use an actual government-issued ID.
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
I think this is why Indiana quit printing ID's in the county offices. They are now printed in a central location in Indianapolis and arrive in the mail.
- ci5er 10y ago
  That may be part of it, but in Texas (where they do the same thing), they use the mail-back as a way to (partially) verify your physical address.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago

The mass use of fake IDs of this sort is a bizarrely American problem. In the UK, you're considered an adult at age 18. Most (aside from the unfortunate 17-year-olds) university students can legally purchase alcohol, smoke, or gamble if they so choose. But we don't have MADD, I guess.

walshemj 10y ago
Yes and there is even push back against under 21 sqadies /grunts being able to drink - you can put your life on the line for your country but cant get a beer
- post_break 10y ago
  Same thing with weapons. Go shoot automatic rifles with the government, oh you want to buy hand gun ammunition? Sorry you can't, have to be 21.
  - 0xfeba 10y ago
    Depends on the state, but Federal law does require you to be 21 or older to purchase a handgun. Ammunition can be sold without any background checks or ID checks in some states.
    - post_break 10y ago
      21 to purchase from a retail, I believe it's still 18 to purchase from an individual, making it even more backwards.
      - dTal 10y ago
        Is that really so backwards? Seems to me that a personal sale is a more intimate exchange and it might be expected that the seller vets the buyer a bit more carefully than your average retail transaction, thus justifying the lower age restriction.
      - 10y ago

realusername 10y ago

Is that seriously how the driving license looks like in the US? It looks like a student card, I understand why it's easy to duplicate now.

amyjess 10y ago
It looks easier than it is. There are holograms all over the cards that don't photograph well.
swimfar 10y ago
Compared to what? I've seen much simpler driver's licenses from other countries. Up until recently (2013 maybe) the French driver's license was literally a piece of pink paper with a picture glued to it. http://flawlessfakeids.com/wp-content/uploads/French-Fake-Driving-Licence-2.jpg http://flawlessfakeids.com/wp-content/uploads/French-Fake-Dr...
- thomasmarcelis 10y ago
  But a drivers license is not a valid proof of identification here
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Surely unlicensed drivers are at least as valid a concern. Most fake IDs I've seen are non-driver IDs.
- danielbln 10y ago
  Compared to Germany for example with a bunch of holograms and whatnot: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/DE_Licence_2013_Front.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/DE_Licen... In contrast to e.g. the French, our drivers licence is a valid means of identification though.
  - eli 10y ago
    That looks similar to many of the new US state IDs due to increased security requirements of REAL ID. My Washington, DC license has a holograms and a neat translucent panel where you can see my photo if you hold it up to the light. I would guess it is very hard to fake.

tclancy 10y ago

About 5 years ago I went to a getaway-type bachelor party. Along with us were the groom's future brother-in-law and two state police officers (friends of the groom, it wasn't that exciting a trip). At one point in the night, the brother-in-law (18) hands his fake ID over to the cops, they both stare at it and go, "Nope, no way I could tell that was fake." Ever since I've been waiting for the US to suck it up and drop the drinking age back to 18, highway funds be damned.

emodendroket 10y ago
Don't hold your breath.

iplaw 10y ago

A friend of mine from the University of Texas was arrested by Federal Agents while eating dinner in the cafeteria at Jester dormitory. He had purchased a card printing machine, a hologram printer, a blue portrait backdrop, etc. and set up shop in his dorm room. He made quite a bit of money before the law caught up to him and, despite being older and wiser, still has that felony charge hanging over him. A disgruntled customer who was turned away from a bar on 6th Street snitched. Nevermind that this kid looked 15 and it wasn't the ID that sold out his true age. I am confident that these shipments from IDGod are being tracked and recorded, and a bust of the customers and/or IDGod is in the works.

SamBam 10y ago
I feel like a good seller is probably also someone who is choosy about his clients, and doesn't sell to baby-faced 15 year olds.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  And probably doesn't keep his equipment in his dorm room in plain sight.
brilliantcode 10y ago
Lesson #1: Stick with your ideal customers because a customer who isn't a good fit for your product will inevitably experience problems and decide to blame you for it. This is why a refund policy makes sense but even that could be avoided by sticking to rule #1.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

SamBam 10y ago

> in my case, hidden inside a box of red chopsticks. Though I reflexively tossed the utensils out with a glut of election mailers and Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, I soon realized they just might contain what I’d been waiting over two months for. This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?

rsync 10y ago
"This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?" Actually, every two months or so we will receive an amazon package with some item that we never ordered and is not in our purchase queue, etc. Something we never even looked at. I used to think this was just a mistaken fulfillment, etc., but now I think it's intentional. I think vendors are mining purchase history to determine likely new customers for item X and then sending a "mistaken" shipment to introduce the product. I have no evidence to back up that conclusion.
- ue_ 10y ago
  If you don't already know, you should be really careful about this. It's something which scammers do once they've got hold of your card; websites often require you to purchase something shipped to the billing address already on your card before changing the address.
garethsprice 10y ago
Journalists and PR people regularly get all kinds of samplers and swag in the mail, so it's not unlikely.

The_Hoff 10y ago

> The options for payment were Bitcoin and Western Union; since I’m neither a Russian hacker nor a Dark Web impresario, I opted for the latter. This is so frustrating for me to read. Western Union has its own set of problems and its users throw money away on fees, but why is cryptocurrency being thought of as a only being used by Russian Hackers and Dark Web impresarios?

794CD01 10y ago
Because most people who use it are in one of those groups or doing business with someone who is. It is, of course, an unfair stereotype. It's just as popular among Chinese hackers.
BEEdwards 10y ago
Because they accept it as currency when your local convenience store doesn't. Who you can give the money too is generally a good indication of what it's used for and for better or worse bitcoin is for hording and illicit purchases.
Analemma_ 10y ago
> and its users throw money away on fees, Have you seen the transaction fees for Bitcoin lately?
- flyingfences 10y ago
  Still cheaper than WU. A typical BTC txn fee is somewhere in the ballpark of $0.50 right now. The author of this article paid WU a txn fee of $14 if I'm reading it right.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
xkcd-sucks 10y ago
Also, why isn't Western Union thought of as only being used by illegal immigrants and Craigslist scammers?

ben_jones 10y ago

Several of my friends are college bartenders who check these IDs regularly. Most fakes are easy to spot but its generally more of a hassle to actually bounce someone then let them get by. If a bar gets any heat, like a higher percentage of incidents outside in a given month, they'll step up their rejections. Attractive people, and specifically attractive women, are let in much more often.

arprocter 10y ago

Interesting that they mention Boston - along with NC it's the only place where my green card has been refused as an acceptable form of ID. I have no idea why a federally issued photo ID with my name, DoB and photo on it apparently isn't enough to prove my age. As a Brit, it amuses me that there are apparently so many balding 20 year olds with grey beards in the US that I am suspicious. They also don't seem to like my SO's GA driver's license in Boston. Edit - I should add that the second time we went back to the place which wouldn't take my green card as ID they didn't ID us at all

gm-conspiracy 10y ago
There's a reason Ben Franklin moved to Philly.
- arprocter 10y ago
  Ben 'Silence Dogood' Franklin - could've be one of the first fakes?
Fripplebubby 10y ago
Boston is the real deal when it comes to ID crackdowns. About 150k college students so some tens of thousands of fake IDs, plus a history of blue laws. I believe that legally they are even allowed to refuse legitimate out-of-state US drivers' licenses (most places do not do this, but they can). Foreign passports also can be refused. And that's not even counting the notorious "box scanners" which, to my knowledge, are yet to be beaten reliably with a fake...
- arprocter 10y ago
  Good to know - I've yet to have my passport refused anywhere, but it's annoying to have to carry it around, let alone potentially lose it on a night out A document that permits someone to enter the country isn't acceptable to prove their age. Wacky.
- Fripplebubby 10y ago
  Meanwhile in the UK I have had many places accept my expired US license from a rural state most have not even heard of. Once at a supermarket, a cashier asked me for ID and I absent mindedly said "No thanks". He was satisfied with that answer, and I didn't realize what I had said until I had already left with my drinks in hand.

fivestar 10y ago

So many interesting threads to discuss on this matter. The problem in the US is too many people hate that others have freedom--hence the MADD group's desire to remove any semblance of fun in order to make everyone else as miserable as they are. The US drinking age, if there should be one at all, should revert to 18 and the ID problem would pretty much disappear. I can't describe all the ways that people have become emotionally and socially stunted simply because we have too many laws making typical, normal human behavior illegal in order so that some company can earn higher profits (think lawyers, think insurance industry). They've ruined our way of life and we need it back. We are a nation in hiding, ducking too many laws, too many cops, and too many restrictions. I'm not saying people should be free to drink and drive, but I am saying that all the laws limiting behavior have had tremendous negative consequences. On to the lowly driver's license. Once upon a time, possessing one demonstrated that one could competently operate a motor vehicle. No more. Today, most "driver's" can't drive worth a damn, and the "license" they hold is an over-regulated, poorly implemented national identity card that you must have in order to get on a flight or enter certain Federal facilities. It's utterly stupid. Identity cards in general are dumb and over-wrought contrivances that are mostly totalitarian in nature "your papers please"--how soon we forget. And now we have RealID, which is even worse, and soon there will be a massive data breach of all that RealID information the feds are hanging on to with all the attendant negative consequences for the people who willingly surrendered themselves to big government. That there exists a thriving illegal Id industry in the 21st century makes me happy because it means the trap of tyranny isn't completed shut--there is still resistance, still a means of escape. People, Americans especially, and HN readers most notably, need to forego their fears and re-learn what it means to be free again. Free doesn't mean "subject to incalculable bureaucratic restrictions on one's life." Quite the contrary. Be free, resist the bullshit! The other, related matter that irks me is the background check. Never was there are more worthless, false sense of security than the background check. But that is a matter for another day.