This app was mentioned in 2 comments, with an average of 17.50 upvotes
While shopping in NYC, I accidentally bought a counterfeit Papa Recipe mask. I wanted to know if counterfeit masks are circulating widely in the US, so I bought $100 in research sheet masks on Amazon Prime, focusing especially on Papa Recipe mask listings where buyers mention that they received counterfeit or otherwise unacceptable masks. All masks with stickers checked out as authentic; two boxes manufactured before the introduction of the stickers were unable to be verified, of course, and my attempts to get them hand-authenticated have come to naught.
I was able to check the authenticity of the masks I purchased using hologram stickers on the products and verification apps that can read the numbers and hidden information in them. There are two companies in Korea that I'm aware of that make these stickers and apps: Brandsafer and Hiddentag (full disclosure: Hiddentag contacted me to ask if I'd write a sponsored/paid post about their technology on fan-b and I declined; this is how I was aware of the purpose of these stickers).
Brandsafer app download landing page
Hiddentag app download: iOS | Android
At this point, sticker use for securing Korean cosmetics is still fairly young — they're not on every product, and brands are seemingly just introducing stickers now or switching to sticker brands with more secure verification methods (the Q&A bit about why QR codes are a BS way to secure products was pretty shocking to me). But I think we have reason to be cautiously optimistic because it looks like 1) we have more ways to autonomously authenticate the products we buy, 2) kbeauty is actually doing something about counterfeiting, and 3) even though I really dug for counterfeit masks, I couldn't buy any on Prime.
While kbeauty companies have come up with ways to secure and authenticate even $2 sheet masks, most Western luxury and Insta brands can't even be bothered to slap on a useless QR code as a nod to product security. Much has been made of innovative kbeauty product formulas, but the innovation runs deeper than that. Hopefully it won't take Western brands seven years to catch up to this development.
While shopping in NYC, I accidentally bought a counterfeit Papa Recipe mask. I wanted to know if counterfeit masks are circulating widely in the US, so I bought $100 in research sheet masks on Amazon Prime, focusing especially on Papa Recipe mask listings where buyers mention that they received counterfeit or otherwise unacceptable masks. All masks with stickers checked out as authentic; two boxes manufactured before the introduction of the stickers were unable to be verified, of course, and my attempts to get them hand-authenticated have come to naught.
I was able to check the authenticity of the masks I purchased using hologram stickers on the products and verification apps that can read the numbers and hidden information in them. There are two companies in Korea that I'm aware of that make these stickers and apps: Brandsafer and Hiddentag (full disclosure: Hiddentag contacted me to ask if I'd write a sponsored/paid post about their technology on fan-b and I declined; this is how I was aware of the purpose of these stickers).
Brandsafer app download landing page
Hiddentag app download: iOS | Android
At this point, sticker use for securing Korean cosmetics is still fairly young — they're not on every product, and brands are seemingly just introducing stickers now or switching to sticker brands with more secure verification methods (the Q&A bit about why QR codes are a BS way to secure products was pretty shocking to me). But I think we have reason to be cautiously optimistic because it looks like 1) we have more ways to autonomously authenticate the products we buy, 2) kbeauty is actually doing something about counterfeiting, and 3) even though I really dug for counterfeit masks, I couldn't buy any on Prime.
While kbeauty companies have come up with ways to secure and authenticate even $2 sheet masks, most Western luxury and Insta brands can't even be bothered to slap on a useless QR code as a nod to product security. Much has been made of innovative kbeauty product formulas, but the innovation runs deeper than that. Hopefully it won't take Western brands seven years to catch up to this development.