Embed additional private information into two-dimensional bar codes by the visual secret sharing scheme

PDF417-based card carrying the much information is an international defacto standard for verification, registration, or other data management of the government issued card. In this paper, the PDF417 symbol (a two-dimensional (2D) bar code) is divided into two modified 2D bar codes by using the (2, 2, h, l, m) Visual Secret Sharing (VSS) technique to provide the public and private information. Like the traditional PDF417-based card, the personal information included in the public data can be verified by anyone in the government organization but the private personal record is only inspected by the authorized staffs. Moreover, our proposed PDF417-based card can modify the private information without reissuing the card.