Detect tampered and deepfake Sri Lanka NIC

What a genuine Sri Lanka NIC contains

Older numbers run nine digits followed by the letter V or X: two digits of birth year, three of day-of-year, a serial, and a check digit. Numbers issued since 2016 run twelve digits with a four-digit year. In both, the day-of-year runs 001 to 366 for men, and 501 to 866 for women, because five hundred is added.

Day-of-year is counted as if every year had 366 days, so dates from March in non-leap years appear one higher than a plain count. Old and new formats coexist, and cards print in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. The check digit algorithm is not published, so the decode checks target year, day, and gender instead.

How Sri Lanka NIC forgeries are made

• Birth-year decode

  The leading digits give the birth year, two digits on old numbers and four on new ones. A year that contradicts the printed date of birth shows the number and the print do not belong together.

• Day-of-year and gender decode

  The three day digits give the day of year, with five hundred added for women. Decoding them against the printed date of birth and sex exposes edited fields, allowing for the 366-day convention.

• Range and format rules

  Day numbers must fall in 001 to 366 or 501 to 866. Old numbers end in V or X, and a twelve-digit number with a letter suffix, or any other suffix letter, is malformed.

• Format against issue date

  Twelve-digit numbers were introduced in 2016. A twelve-digit number on a card claiming an earlier issue date contradicts the issuing history.

• Photo and data patching

  Substituted portraits and edited name or date lines leave cut-line edges, font passes, and sharpening halos, and trilingual labels make baseline breaks easy to localise.

What TamperCheck checks on a Sri Lanka NIC

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.

• 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.

• Reference and document number checks

  Document, account, and reference numbers are checked for issuer format conformance and against every other place the same value appears on the page.

• Field-level forensics

  Every text region is analysed in its own right rather than as part of one whole-page image. This catches the smoothed and feathered edits that whole-image Error Level Analysis misses entirely.

• And many more checks

  The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a Sri Lanka NIC. 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 Sri Lanka NIC, and why

Sri Lankan banks, telcos, and eKYC platforms. 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 Sri Lanka NIC in 4 steps

1. 1

   Photograph the document

   Capture the card flat at full resolution so the number and printed fields survive close analysis.

2. 2

   Decode the number

   Split the number into year, day-of-year, and serial, subtracting five hundred for women, and compare the result with the printed date of birth and sex.

3. 3

   Mind the calendar convention

   Remember that the day count assumes 366 days, so a March to December date in a non-leap year reads one higher than a plain count.

4. 4

   Run a forensic check on the file

   TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks including NIC number decoding and patch detection, returning a risk score from 0 to 100 with findings tied to specific regions of the image.

Frequently asked questions