Gadgetory

back in the day if you really wanted to try a cigarette or a beer but we're a few months or even years south of proper it often wasn't all that hard to get your friends cool older brother to make you a fake driver's license that looked close enough to the real thing to fool a clerk and allow you to walk out of the store contraband in hand in modern times though governments and other organizations have used technology to finally start to seriously combat the ancient practices of forgery and counterfeiting not just to make sure you're really of legal age but to prevent serious crimes like human trafficking and keep your money safe so what are some of the things that make documents like passports driver's licenses credit cards and cash so hard to forge these days let's start with something that's usually pretty easy to see the hologram because a hologram is really a precise record of how light diffracts off of an object at different angles it's harder to produce than a regular photograph you need lasers lenses and special film making these a popular security feature on ID cards credit cards and passports but of course Holograms can still be copied given the right tools so these days you might also see very fine engraving in the hologram if you look closely enough which is even more difficult to copy if you don't have the same equipment that was originally used to make it but what about the stuff then that's a little less obvious and no I'm not talking about the ignorant and culturally offensive rumor that Canada made it's hundred dollar bills that smell like maple syrup no wait a minute but rather the special inks that are used for printing money or other documents oftentimes governments can defeat people that try to modify passports illegally by printing them with thermally sensitive ink when the forger tries to tamper with the passport a process that often requires heat the ink will change color letting officials know that passport is no longer kosher there are also inks that can be printed in two-and-a-half dimensions so you can actually feel a bump with your finger ones that shift color depending on the viewing angle this is a pretty neat feature of the latest u.s. currency and even ones that shine under a blacklight you can learn more about that in this video here but there's more to it than just technology and owning the right equipment sometimes the best defense can be simply attention to detail have you ever bought a Louis Vuitton purse that has the LV logos cut off by a seam or an iPhone with typos on the packaging well the agencies that print money and ID's can even outsmart counterfeiters through similar means here's an example certain fonts that they might use look simple or unremarkable at first glance but might have subtleties that make them very hard to reproduce exactly and many times they aren't fonts that you can get from a Google search but proprietary typefaces only used by a certain country's government some of which contain intentional imperfections to throw counterfeiters off the more you know of course many of us are using bank or credit cards a heck of a lot more than cash these days so stay tuned for a follow-up episode on those newfangled chip cards and how and why they're harder to copy then those Meg stripes that we're all used to swiping or if by this point in the video your tinfoil hat sense is tingling let me know in the comments if you want to see a video about exchanging things we know are valuable like gold coins magic beans and cows or maybe you can save me the trouble by creating your own website documenting the merits of the barter system with eggs chickens and cows as currency and putting it up online with Squarespace Squarespace lets you take your vision whatever that vision is and put it on the web easily and affordably they've got 24/7 support via live chat and email and it starts at just 12 bucks a month and you get a free domain if you by Squarespace for the year all of their 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out our other channels comment with a video suggestion all my arm is kind of sore I fell down on one of our recent channel super-fun videos on the slackline and like busted it anyway maybe we'll put that as a suggested video well and don't forget to subscribe and follow for more videos just like this one