Royal Mail, the British postal and courier service began switching all snail mail stamps to barcoded stamps last year. The purpose of the barcode was to enhance security, deter stamp reuse, and possibly prevent forgeries—which it has failed to do.

Royal Mail, the British postal and courier service began switching all snail mail stamps to barcoded stamps last year. The purpose of the barcode was to enhance security, deter stamp reuse, and possibly prevent forgeries—which it has failed to do. […]

  • @[email protected]English
    3•8 months ago

    Kinda buried the headline

    A Royal Mail executive does admit that its “overly sensitive” machines can sometimes wrongly flag genuine stamps as fake

    They are charging £5 (to the recipient) for these false positives!

    When asked why the machine might be wrongly flagging a legitimate stamp, the executive replied: “I mean who knows …"

    Richard Trinder, the chairman of a campaign group that represents those wrongly convicted in the Horizon IT scandal, said: “It goes without saying that postmasters do not want to have to deal with false accusations about something else.”