Supported document type
Detect tampered and deepfake National ID
A national ID is the document that everything else in a country hangs off, which is exactly why forging one pays. One card opens bank accounts, registers SIMs, and claims benefits in a name the holder has no right to. The identification number carries most of that value, and it is rarely a free-form string. Most schemes build structure into it, so an invented number breaks a rule the card cannot conceal. TamperCheck tests the card against its own internal logic.
API slug: national_id
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What a genuine national ID contains
A national identity card carries the holder's full name, date and place of birth, sex, nationality, the national identification number, the issuing authority, and dates of issue and expiry, printed alongside a portrait and often a fingerprint image or signature. The number is the field the national register is keyed on. Depending on the country the card adds a machine-readable line, a barcode or QR code repeating the printed data, a chip contact plate or contactless symbol, and a guilloche background beneath everything.
In most schemes the identification number is not arbitrary. It encodes some combination of birth date, sex, region of registration, and a serial, closed by a check digit calculated across the rest. That makes the number testable on its own terms, and it also binds it to the birth date and sex printed elsewhere on the card. Where a barcode or machine-readable line is present it states those same values a third time, so a single edit has to be made in three places to survive.
How national ID forgeries are made
Identification number substitution
The national number is swapped for one belonging to another registered person, or invented outright. Invented values commonly fail the scheme's own check digit or contradict the birth date and sex they are supposed to encode, and borrowed values leave the rest of the card describing somebody entirely different.
Photo zone replacement
A different face is placed over the printed portrait so a real registration can be worked by someone else. The guilloche and microprint that continue into the portrait area stop dead at the edit boundary, and the replaced region carries its own tonal and sharpness characteristics rather than the card's.
Birth date changes for eligibility
A date of birth is altered to satisfy an age condition for a pension, a subsidy, a licence, or a registration. On cards whose number encodes the birth date this defeats itself: the visible date and the number then disagree, and forgers almost always update only one of the two.
Barcode and QR mismatch
Many cards restate the printed data in a 2D barcode. Forgers change what a human reads and leave the encoded copy untouched, or paste in a symbol that decodes to nothing at all. Reading the code and comparing it against the front of the card settles the question in seconds.
Microprint and guilloche loss
Fine-line backgrounds and microprinted text survive only at the resolution they were originally printed at. Scanned, reprinted, or redrawn, guilloche lines merge into bands and microprint collapses into a grey smear. The degradation is measurable even where the card still looks correct at a glance.
Whole-card synthesis
For schemes whose layout is well documented, cards are generated complete, number included. Because every field was created in one pass they agree with each other perfectly. What separates them from real cards is production: no lamination depth, no capture path, and a print structure the issuing authority does not use.
What TamperCheck checks on a national ID
TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks across three layers and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 with plain-English findings tied to specific regions of the document. These three carry the most weight on this document class.
Machine-readable zone validation
Check digits across every MRZ field are recomputed, and the encoded name, number, and dates are compared against the values printed on the face of the document. Forgers routinely update one and forget the other.
Portrait substitution and face-swap analysis
The document is isolated from whatever it was photographed on, then the portrait region is assessed against the card surface around it. A pasted or generated face rarely matches the substrate it was placed onto.
Security print, foil, and hologram analysis
A genuine security overlay or guilloche background behaves differently from a printed picture of one. A reproduction loses the structure that made the feature a security feature in the first place, and that loss is measurable even when the copy looks convincing on screen.
And many more checks
The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a national ID. Every upload runs the full suite of 200+ checks regardless of document class, spanning file structure and metadata, pixel-level forensics, font and text rendering, optical and print characteristics, provenance signals, AI-generation signatures, and many more checks.
Who verifies a national ID, and why
Banks and regulated businesses running KYC and official registration. In each case the document is being used to unlock money, access, or a legal status, which is exactly what makes it worth forging.
How to verify a national ID in 4 steps
Check the fields against each other
Read ID number, portrait photo, and date of birth together rather than one at a time. Forgers typically change one value and leave the rest of the document describing the original.
Inspect the file metadata
Open the document properties and look at the producer, creation date, and modification date. A document produced by a consumer PDF editor, or created long after the date printed on its face, is worth a closer look.
Ask for a second document
Request a corroborating document from the same issuer or an adjacent period. Forgery effort concentrates on one file, so inconsistencies surface as soon as there are two to compare.
Run a forensic check
Manual review catches obvious edits but not field-level pixel manipulation or synthetic generation. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks on a national ID and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 within seconds, at $0.50 per document.
Frequently asked questions
How do I verify a national ID card is real?
Start with the identification number, since most national schemes give it a fixed structure and a check digit, and many encode the birth date and sex that also appear in print. Confirm those agree, decode any barcode or machine-readable line and compare it against the front, then check that the guilloche and microprint hold their detail and that the portrait area is not interrupted.
How do banks detect fake national IDs?
Banks combine number format validation, a comparison between printed fields and any encoded copy on the card, a biometric match against the applicant, and forensic analysis of the submitted image. The last of those is what catches a genuine card that has been edited, because a card with a valid number and a substituted photograph passes every check that only reads data.
Does a national ID number have a check digit?
In many national schemes it does, though the rule varies by country and a few use plain sequential numbering with no verification built in. Where a check digit exists it is computed from the digits before it, so a number altered by hand almost always fails it. Where none exists, the number still has to agree with the birth date and region printed on the card.
Can a national ID be checked without access to the register?
Yes, up to a point. Without the register you cannot confirm the person exists, but you can establish whether the document is internally consistent and physically plausible, which is where most forgeries fail. TamperCheck analyses only the file it is given, returning a risk score from 0 to 100 and naming the field that was edited.
TamperCheck analyses national id uploads with a hybrid forensic and AI pipeline tuned for this document class. Upload endpoints accept PDF and common image formats; class is inferred automatically. See the API & MCP documentation for authentication, async jobs, and webhooks.