Belgium: An editor's worst nightmare
You just know editors' hearts are breaking all over the world today. An article on expatriate survival site Expatica.com claims that new ID cards in Belgium are being printed with intentional misspellings in an attempt to thwart potential fraudsters.
Four circular arcs on the ID cards show the country's name in different languages--French, Dutch, German and English. According to the article, the German and English arcs will be spelled incorrectly, and misspellings will also appear elsewhere on the cards. The idea is that people making counterfeit cards won't notice the misspellings on the originals and will print the fraudulent cards with the names spelled properly.
It's not a bad concept, and according to the article, similar efforts have been successful elsewhere. But if e-mail from phishers is any indication of the spelling skills of fraudsters, Belgium might be taking a wrong turn. As any recipient of phishing spam knows, the e-mails are usually riddled with spelling and grammar errors. I'm guessing would-be counterfeiters are more likely to unknowingly print the "right" wrong spellings than to notice it's wrong and duplicate it.
