Mysterious Bar Codes

This is for the particular attention of banks, other financial institutions and any company or institution dealing with the personal finances of an individual or company.

The message? If you use mysterious bar codes in customer letters, please be aware that human beings can't read them. The question then is what information does that bar code contain? Is it sensitive personal or commercial data - who knows? The recipient certainly doesn't. They can't read it!  So what might be a solution?

• Don't use bar codes or any other hidden data?
• Or if you must use bar codes, tell customers what information it contains, in text directly underneath

Dispose of a document, or not?

The advantage of revealing or explaining what information the bar code contains, means that the customer can then decide which document, or part of the document can be safely recycled or discarded without further worry.

Businesses should then be seen to be helping encourage, rather than discourage their customers to recycle more paper. So please do tell us what those mysterious bar codes mean. Otherwise we may not feel we can safely recycle any paper that contains them.