Apple iPhone 15 Uses UV-Activated QR Code to Deter Counterfeits

With the launch of the iPhone 15 series, Apple has introduced new measures to thwart scammers. These features can be quickly verified by buyers and sellers to ensure they have authentic iPhone packaging and are not being scammed with look-alike products in similar-looking, but fake packaging.

Customers buying from big retailers who have secure supply chain management in place, won't need to worry so much about device authenticity. However, in the case of the resale market and smaller vendors, there are more opportunities for fake products to enter the chain.

The new feature appears near the top and bottom of the packaging for the entry-level iPhone 15, the middle-level iPhone 15 Plus, and the top-end iPhone 15 Pro Max.

An important part of the counterfeiter’s ‘job’, apart from making a good simulation of the original product, is to make a convincing replica of the retail packaging. The iPhone 15 series packaging comes in high quality but minimal packaging, which can often be the most difficult to mimic. But by copying the design, logos, images, dimensions, touch and feel and – most importantly – the print quality of the retail box, many fraudsters successfully trick unsuspecting buyers.

UV inks, containing fluorescent dyes, are a familiar tool in the printing of government-issued high-security documents, such as banknotes and passports. The dyes are generally invisible in natural white light but are stimulated by UV light to fluoresce at a specific narrow range of frequencies in the visible part of the spectrum.

In the case of the iPhone packaging, a UV ink is used to print out a QR-code, which is invisible in white light but visible when illuminated with a UV lamp.

These new labels are printed on the back of the retail box in the upper right and lower right corners. It is not immediately clear, at the moment, what the full function of the code is, but QR codes can hold a surprising amount of data which, dependent on dimensions and encoding, could carry more than 4,000 alphanumeric characters. Another option is that the QR code leads the buyer to an Apple website for additional product verification.

The new security measure is in addition to conventional marking methods such as the ‘Genuine’ label, Apple-branded stickers, as well as bespoke wrapping.