Damned passports?

Last monday, a curious note named "Villagers snub new passports over Satan" appeared on the front page of the Victoria News Daily, which happened to be a very strange note that I think is worth sharing in my blog.
It talks about people freaked out in a village called Bogolyubovo, in Russia. They are systematically refusing to obtain a new series of passports issued by the government because they consider them sinful. And the reason to consider them sinful is that those passports have bar codes (which, by the way, is not the one that appears on the picture), each of which, supposedly, contains the number 666 somewhere on it.
The most interesting part is that the supposed number is not even visible on the bar code. According to the villagers, some experts have told them that the number is contained, but I suppose that a scanner is needed to find that out.
This incident has unleashed a "bar-code-phobia" in Bogolyubovo. The situation has reached unimaginable horizons; it has gone as far as having people reluctant to cash their pension money at post offices because the slip contains a bar code, which might contain the three sixes as well.
I can't believe what I read on this. I have a single word to express my thoughts about it: weird.