Document Number On Drivers License Texas
TO APPLY FOR orRENEW a TEXAS DRIVER’S LICENSE or TX ID CARD: →You must reside in Texas for at least 30 days before you can apply for a TX DL or ID card← For international students, scholars, or those applying for or on OPT, and their dependents: Take the documents listed below to a Texas Driver’s License Office to apply: 1.
The audit number is a key piece of information on every Texas license, used to prove the validity of the license. On the 'new' style which began to be issued in the mid-2000s, it's the bottommost line numbered '5'. The field is named 'DD', which is an initialism for “Document Discriminator”, which is the technical name for the audit number under the Federal REAL ID Act:
The purpose of the number is to uniquely identify each license the TxDPS issues. It is the only number on a license that is guaranteed to be unique, especially in cases where an individual is issued multiple licenses that have not expired.
How could that happen, you ask? Well, Texas driver licenses are valid for six years; the first six years I was on my own in this state, I moved four times, not counting dorm assignments. When you change addresses, you're required to update that information with DPS and get a new license. Now, you have two licenses, each with the same name, DL number and expiration date, but different addresses.
Which one's valid? It's impossible to tell just by looking at the license itself (there's nothing on the old one that changes when the new one is issued). DPS, however, knows which audit number is on the one it most recently issued (as well as the audit numbers of all other licenses issued for any combination of identifying information from the license), and when it was mailed. So if you're using the older license a few days after a new one was issued, that's fine, it's still in the mail. If you're using it several months later, that's a red flag.
Texas Id Replacement
This number can also be used to detect forgeries; the number is not dependent on any other information on the card, so it's 'difficult' to come up with a number that's valid at all ('difficult' here having the meaning of 'practically impossible without a guy on the inside'), and it's encoded in the magnetic stripe alongside the DL number and other information, so with one swipe, an ID-check device (every cop car has one and many credit card readers in POS systems can also read REAL ID-compliant cards) can access the DPS website and search for an exact match of the card information, including document discriminator. If an exact match doesn't exist, the card's been forged or tampered with.