Importance

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Abstract

Presented is a method for authenticating mailpieces utilizing cryptographically secured or plain text indicia printed on the mailpiece as evidence of postage payment without the necessity of including recipient address information in the indicia. This reduces the physical size of the required indicia, allowing additional real estate on the face of a mailpiece to be utilized for advertising verbiage, graphics, personal messages, illustrations, etc. Counterfeiting of the indicia is deterred by maintaining a master log database of the printed indicia. The information stored in the master log database preferably associates a transaction or serial number of the printed indicia with recipient address information. Counterfeit indicia are identified through a comparison of the stored information in the master log database with information scanned from the mailpiece itself Counterfeits may also be detected by recognizing the multiple occurrences of identical indicia.

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First Claim