Eheysmerkit

Eheysmerkit are marks or features applied to products, documents, or services to indicate integrity and authenticity. The term is Finnish, with eheys meaning integrity and merkit meaning marks or seals. They are designed to show that content or packaging has not been altered and that the item is genuine.

Types include physical eheysmerkit, such as tamper-evident seals, holograms, microtext, serialized labels, and seals on packaging, and digital eheysmerkit, such as cryptographic signatures, hash values, QR codes, NFC tags, and provenance records. Some systems combine physical and digital cues for robust verification.

Applications span consumer products, pharmaceuticals, electronics, luxury goods, official documents, and food packaging. In logistics and supply chains, eheysmerkit support traceability and accountability by enabling verification of authenticity and integrity at points along the chain.

Standards and regulation are typically aligned with broader product-safety, anti-counterfeiting, and e-commerce rules. Industry schemes from organizations such as GS1, ISO, and national authorities provide guidelines for implementing security features, serialization, and verification processes.

Challenges include evolving counterfeiting methods and the need for user-friendly verification, secure data management, and cross-border interoperability.