By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
Like most people, Kiki Mauricio just hands over her New Jersey driver’s license to be scanned on request — at bars or restaurants or stores — without realizing her personal info’s encoded in two smart strips on the back.
“So many things that anybody can just track you. They can find where you live,” she said.
The long bar code on New Jersey’s license contains all the data that’s on the front, like name, address, date of birth and more. When you hand your license over, scanners can data-mine it automatically.
You can even download apps that will scan your license. We tried one called Scannr — for free — and it surrendered only name and age. But others spill the beans.
“This is a critically important identification document, and if it falls into the wrong hands, you could have a problem,” said security expert Adam Levin.
Levin says businesses increasingly swipe driver’s licenses.
“In most cases they don’t just confirm your identity and then throw the information away. They store it,” he said. “You don’t necessarily know how safe it is, when they store it, and they sometimes sell it.”
Experts advise, consider walking away instead of turning over your driver’s license, even at happy hour.
“If you’re gonna go somewhere you have to make a decision — about, ‘do I want to go here with all of my friends or am I going to leave, because I don’t want my license scanned?'” said Jersey City resident Shane Strano.
When asked if he would walk out instead of turning over his license to be scanned, Levin said, “Absolutely. In today’s environment, we don’t know who we’re giving that info to.”
Former FBI special agent Manny Gomez says your data could end up overseas.
“The next thing you know, they’re selling Social Security cards and driver’s licenses with different identities all over the country if not all over the world. It’s very scary and we need to be very judicious as to who we give our driver’s license to,” Gomez said.
Some states — like Texas — actually sell the personal information on driver’s licenses. New Jersey’s MVC wouldn’t confirm what it does with ours — or what’s on that second, shorter smart strip.
“The second strip is a mystery. The NJ MVC says they don’t share that information with anyone — it’s for internal purposes,” Levin said.
So the information’s all here. Security experts say you’re the only one who can decide whether to turn this over and let others take a swipe at it.