Information carrier comprising access information

The invention relates to an information carrier for holding user information, the information carrier comprising access information in the form of access information bits for accessing the user information, the access information bits being stored on the information carrier in a variation of a parameter, which variation is detectable by integration detection. The access information bits are scrambled to a sequence of bits according to a pre-determined scrambling method which scrambling comprises an exclusive-or function (XOR) of the sequence of bits with random bits and a permutation of the sequence of bits and in that the variation is detectable by descrambling and integration detection. The bits comprising the access information are XOR-ed with random bits. These random bits can for example be retrieved from the information carrier or can be present in the apparatus reading out the information carrier. On the resulting bits a random permutation is performed. By scrambling the access information bits according to a pre-determined scrambling method detection of the access information is not possible as long as the scrambling method is not known. Using the integration detection technique only results in the access information is one knows how the signal obtained after reading-out the area comprising the access information bits must be processed. In this way illegal retrieval of the user information is further prevented.