A method and system for authenticating a variety of consumer products is provided. The system includes a plurality of near field communication (NFC) tags configured for coupling to a variety of consumer products, the tags programmed to provide identifying data associated with a single consumer product to an NFC-capable mobile computing device, the NFC having a structure that detects opening of the consumer product, a central database for storing said data, a server communicably connected to a communications network and configured to access the database, and a mobile application executing on a mobile computing device, configured to read said identifying data from the NFC tag and communicate said identifying data to the server.