Electronic Pickpocket Stoppers
I found this in the Style Section of the Washington Post, but it may have been more at home in the travel section. These RFID chips used in DC’s Smart Cards and Boston’s CharlieCards and the electronic toll gadgets we used to go through tolls are being put into new passports. It is something to think about.
The issue is bigger than just the new style of passports, which contain chips that emit information that can be read by a scanner. We’re also talking about your Metro SmarTrip card, your employee ID/building access card, your automatic highway toll pass, the newest wave of credit cards and gas purchasing cards, even digital drivers’ licenses being developed in some states.
All of these nifty and oh-so-convenient bits of plastic employ versions of what’s known as radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. That is, they toss out bits of data that are caught by receivers, with little or no contact, just through the air in some cases. The new credit cards, such as MasterCard’s PayPass, don’t have to be swiped through a machine. Swiping is so retro, and takes precious extra seconds. You need only lightly tap the PayPass on a terminal to register a purchase.
Our credit card numbers, passport information and more may be floating around us as we walk.
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Some vendors sell wallets & passport folders that have embedded faraday cages, that claim to make rfid pickpocketing more difficult. (see thinkgeek.com and search for “wallet”)