Detect tampered and deepfake Visa

What a genuine visa contains

A visa sticker states the terms of an entry permission. It carries the issuing state and the issuing post, the visa type or category, the number of entries permitted, the dates it becomes valid and expires, the duration of stay allowed inside that window, the visa number, and the holder's name, nationality, and passport number. Most designs add a portrait, a machine-readable zone in the visa format, and a background of guilloche printing with optically variable elements over the data.

The terms bind to each other and to the passport beneath. Duration of stay cannot exceed the validity window containing it, a single-entry visa cannot support a second arrival, and the passport number printed on the sticker has to match the number on the biodata page of the book it is fixed inside. The sticker is bonded to one specific page, so its edges, its alignment to the page grid, and how its print meets the paper underneath are all evidence.

How visa forgeries are made

• Validity and duration edits

  The valid-until date or the permitted length of stay is extended so an exhausted visa supports another trip. The edit often produces terms the category cannot grant, such as a stay longer than the validity window that is supposed to contain it, which fails without any reference to the issuing post.

• Entry count upgrades

  A single-entry visa is changed to multiple, the cheapest way to turn a spent permission into a reusable one. The entries field is short and isolated, so the change is small, and it typically leaves that field's character weight and background pattern out of step with everything around it.

• Category upgrades

  A visit or transit category is rewritten as a work or study category, changing what the holder may do rather than when they may do it. Employers and airlines read the category line closely, and an altered one rarely matches the sticker's own typography or the code set the issuing post uses.

• Sticker transplanting

  A genuine sticker is lifted out of a cancelled or expired passport and bonded into a different book. The passport number printed on it then belongs to another document, the sticker edges show heat or solvent damage, and its alignment to the page is not what an issuing machine produces.

• Printed replicas pasted into a book

  A visa is printed onto adhesive stock and applied to a blank page. Security patterns reproduce as flat colour, optically variable elements hold one appearance whatever the angle, and the applied surface returns light differently from the passport page it has been stuck onto.

• Generated visa pages

  Where the visa is only ever seen as a scan of a passport page, the page can be produced whole rather than edited. Everything agrees because nothing was altered, so detection rests on print structure, on how the sticker meets the paper, and on generation signatures in the image.

What TamperCheck checks on a visa

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.

• 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.

• Embossed seal analysis

  A physically embossed seal deforms the paper it sits on. A seal that was scanned and reprinted is flat, and the two separate cleanly under analysis even when they are hard to tell apart by eye.

• Date and validity consistency

  Issue, expiry, and period dates are checked against one another and against the file's own creation metadata, which catches backdating and validity extension.

• And many more checks

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

Airlines, border officers, and employers confirming entry and work rights. 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 visa in 4 steps

1. 1

   Match the visa against the passport it is in

   The passport number, surname, given names, and nationality printed on the sticker have to match the biodata page of the book it is fixed inside. This is the check a transplanted sticker cannot pass, and it needs both pages captured in the same submission rather than the visa page alone.

2. 2

   Test the terms against each other

   Read the category, the number of entries, the validity window, and the permitted duration of stay as one set. A stay longer than the window, or an entry count the category never grants, is a contradiction inside the sticker itself and needs no external reference to settle.

3. 3

   Parse the machine-readable zone

   Visa stickers carry their own machine-readable format, with check digits over the visa number, the expiry date, and the holder's date of birth. Read it and set every value beside the printed one above it. The two halves are edited separately far more often than they are edited together.

4. 4

   Run a forensic check on the page

   Transplanted stickers and reprinted security patterns do not announce themselves on a scan. TamperCheck analyses the visa page as an image and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 with findings tied to specific regions, within seconds at $0.50 per document.

Frequently asked questions