At first glance, it’s an eyesore. A blocky, rectangular patch of black and white hieroglyphics plastered on the back of your driver’s license. Unlike the sleek, minimalist QR codes that advertise craft beer websites, the PDF417 looks like something left over from a 1990s dot-matrix printer.
PDF417 changed the game because the barcode doesn't lie. A forger can copy the front of a license perfectly, but encoding the correct data into a valid PDF417—matching the AAMVA standard with the right checksums and formatting—requires specialized software. And even if they do, that data must match the printed text on the front. pdf417 drivers license
And it does it all in 1.1 kilobytes. End of feature. At first glance, it’s an eyesore