System and method for mail destination address information encoding, protection and recovery in postal payment

• US 20040128254A1
• Filed: 06/06/2003
• Published: 07/01/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pitney Bowes Incorporated (Böwe Systec AG)
• Original Assignee: Pitney Bowes Incorporated (Böwe Systec AG)
• Inventors: Pintsov, Leon A.
• Granted Patent: US 7,613,660 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/62
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 17/00435 Details specific to central, non-customer apparatus, e.g. servers at post office or vendor
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 2017/00443 Verification of mailpieces, e.g. by checking databases
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 2017/00709 Scanning mailpieces
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 2017/00766 Digital signature, e.g. DSA, DSS, ECDSA, ESIGN
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 2017/00782 Hash function, e.g. MD5, MD2, SHA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/34 Encoding or coding, e.g. Huffman coding or error correction
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/56 Financial cryptography, e.g. electronic payment or e-cash
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/321 involving a third party or a trusted authority
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3226 using a predetermined code, e.g. password, passphrase or PIN network architectures or network communication protocols for supporting authentication of entities using passwords in a packet data network H04L63/083
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3247 involving digital signatures

Abstract

A process for evidencing postage payment begins by obtaining a destination address for a mail item and encoding it as a string of characters from which a subset of the encoded string is selected, concatenated with plain text data and then encrypted. The encrypted portion is hashed along and a digital signature is computed as part of the digital postage mark. During verification, the mail item is scanned to obtain a digital image thereof, which is parsed to identify and capture the digital postage mark and the destination address block. A recoverable portion of the DAB is extracted and the digital postage mark is parsed into a plain text area and a cryptographic validation code area. The CVC area is parsed to obtain a recoverable portion. If the recoverable portion of the DAB is within a threshold value of the recoverable portion of the CVC, then the mail item is accepted.

Claims

1. A method for digital postage mark generation for a mail item, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining a destination address for a mail item;

computing a recoverable portion C of the destination address;

formatting the recoverable portion C of a cryptographic validation code along with other information required for digital postage mark computations; and

sending the digital postage mark to the control computer for formatting and printing.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of computing the recoverable portion of the destination address includes the steps of:

formatting the destination address as an address string of characters;

eliminating predetermined words and characters from the address string to form a first string ADDRESSSTRING;

counting a number of characters N in ADDRESSSTRING and a number of numeric characters R in ADDRESSSTRING;

eliminating all numeric characters from ADDRESSSTRING to obtain a second string ALKPHAADDRESSSTRING containing N−

R characters;

selecting an offset S as a number between 0 and N−

R−

1, and a number M of recoverable characters;

selecting M−

R consecutive characters from ALKPHMDDRESSSTRING beginning from the character S+1;

forming a third string RECOVERABLEPORTION by taking R numeric and M−

R alphabetic characters for a total of M selected characters; and

formatting RECOVERABLEPORTION into the number C of the plaintext part of postal data of the digital postage mark.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of forming RECOVERABLEPORTION includes the steps of:

discarding all characters after the count |ALPHADDRESSSTRING| if M−

R>

|ALPHADDRESSSTRING|; and

keeping first |ALPHADDRESSSTRING| characters and pad [M−

R−

|ALPHADDRESSSTRING|] missing characters with repeated characters from the ALPHADDRESSSTRING.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the step of forming RECOVERABLEPORTION includes the further steps of:

selecting all additional required characters beginning from a first character of ALPHADDRESSSTRING if after selecting M−

R consecutive characters beginning from the S+1 character the end of ALPHADDRESSSTRING is reached before all M−

R characters have been selected.

5. A method for address encoding in a postal payment application, the method comprising the steps of:

formatting a destination address as an address string of characters;

eliminating predetermined words and characters from the address string to form a first string ADDRESSSTRING;

counting a number of characters N in ADDRESSSTRING and a number of numeric characters R in ADDRESSSTRING;

eliminating all numeric characters from ADDRESSSTRING to obtain a second string ALKPHMDDRESSSTRING containing N−

R characters;

selecting an offset S as a number between 0 and N−

R−

1, and a number M of recoverable characters;

selecting M−

R consecutive characters from ALKPHAADDRESSSTRING beginning from the character S+1;

forming a third string RECOVERABLEPORTION by taking R numeric and M−

R alphabetic characters for a total of M selected characters; and

formatting RECOVERABLEPORTION into a number C of a plaintext part of postal data of the digital postage mark.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the step of forming RECOVERABLEPORTION includes the steps of:

discarding all characters after the count |ALPHADDRESSSTRING| if M−

R>

|ALPHADDRESSSTRING|; and

keeping first |ALPHADDRESSSTRING| characters and pad [M−

R−

|ALPHADDRESSSTRING|] missing characters with repeated characters from the ALPHADDRESSSTRING.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the step of forming RECOVERABLEPORTION includes the further steps of:

selecting all additional required characters beginning from a first character of ALPHADDRESSSTRING if after selecting M−

R consecutive characters beginning from the S+1 character the end of ALPHADDRESSSTRING is reached before all M−

R characters have been selected.

8. A method for verifying a digital postage mark on a mail item using an address encoding scheme, the method comprising the steps of:

scanning a mail item to obtain a digital image of the mail item;

parsing the digital image of the mail item to identify and capture a digital postage mark and a destination address block from the mail item;

extracting a recoverable portion DABRECOVERABLEPORTION of the destination address block;

parsing the digital postage mark into a plain text area and a cryptographic validation code area;

parsing the cryptographic validation code area into a recoverable portion CVCRECOVERABLEPORTION;

computing a distance function d using CVCRECOVERABLEPORTION and DABRECOVERABLEPORTION;

comparing d with a threshold value; and

accepting the mail item if d is less than the threshold value.

9. The method of claim 8 comprising the further steps of:

rejecting the mail item if d is greater than the threshold value.

10. A method for address encoding for use in a digital postage mark generated by a mailing system, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining a destination address for a mail item;

encoding the destination address as a string of characters;

selecting a subset of the encoded string of characters, wherein the encoded selected subset is uniquely indicative of the destination address;

concatenating the encoded selected subset with plain text data in a digital postage mark;

encrypting the encoded selected subset using a first cryptographic key;

hashing the encrypted portion along with an identity of the mailing system and the plain text data; and

computing a digital signature including the encrypted portion as part of the digital postage mark.