BlueBite's authentication service may be the beginning of a major event.

It is reported that the global trade of counterfeit goods is spreading. 5 trillion dollars a year is not good for anyone. As the counterfeit industry continues to grow, brands are looking for technologies likeRFID(RFID) andNFC(near field communication) to help authenticated their products. This is where BlueBite, a New York based start-up company, hopes to enter. The company has developed a system that relies on a iOS application called Decode, which only needs to click the user's mobile phone to tell the consumer whether the product is real.

The realization of BlueBite's NFC is especially convenient for those who purchase second-hand products on eBay or Amazon websites or buy new products from third party sellers. So far, there is no completely seamless or secure end-to-end authentication service. If chips are exposed, RFID and NFC can be used, and most brands use these technologies to create marketing experience. For example, Nike (Nike) has launched the NBA Jersey, which is characterized by NFC tags, but it is not designed for anti-counterfeiting. Instead, it is an exclusive video of doors, pictures and GIF from players and teams, as well as limited edition shoes.

耐克告诉Engadget at the time that it was definitely investigating all available options of NFC, but it did not use it to crack down on counterfeit goods. Even if it has been tried, the NFC chip in Nike's connection shirt can be easily removed because it is on a tag, not a part of the fabric. This means that it can be tampered with or put on an unreal object. On the other hand, BlueBite can avoid this problem by cooperating with the NFC brand in real products. The company says its decoding application supports all major NFC tags such as HID, laboratory ID and Smartrac, which is important because it makes it easy for a brand to authenticate its products in an existing format.

Seeing BlueBite's system work with Adidas's 2018 World Cup Official ball -Telstar 18-, its function is embedded NFC chip. The whole process is very simple. It only takes 10 seconds: all I have to do is download and decode the application, open it, and then click on a tag "authentication". After that, I clicked on a region of Telstar 18, with four signal waves on it, and then into the application 's "scanning authenticity" section, and then I received a message with a picture of a Adidas ball on which "authentication" was written. You'll also see an authentication ID, how many times the project has been checked, and the first day of "digitize", that is, when the NFC chip of the product was initially scanned.

Blue bites provide more than just letting you know whether your project is real or not. Like Nike's NFC - driven NBA Jersey, Adidas and other brands can also use the NFC chip on its Telstar 18 balls to provide you with an enhanced experience through an application or network. Let's face it, it's great because it can quickly discover that if your project is real, you want to use NFC technology in more. For Telstar 18, it would be nice if Adidas could let you click on it and send you to a special web page to record the history of each world cup.

Of course, one of the big problems with NFC based authentication is that if the chip is exposed, or without a server verifying each authentication scan, NFC authentication can be used. But BlueBite claims that this is not a system problem, because every time you click on a product like Adidas's Telstar 18, it creates and validates a unique authentication ID that third parties can't copy. Not only that, it also helps NFC chips stick inside the interior of a panel, making it harder for anyone to remove and tamper with.

BlueBite says it is currently working with about 15 companies from Bvlgari (Bulgari) and other jewelry manufacturers to the fashion brand Pinko, hoping to increase more in the near future. Notwithstanding this, although BlueBite's services are promising, its success will ultimately depend on the support of the brand. We all agree that we need a simple way to make sure that what we buy is really a real deal.