NYT on RFID

The New York Times has a piece on RFID tags. It's basic, but worth reading as a milestone - the technology is starting to enter the public eye. These RFID tags will have unique serial numbers - every RFID-tagged item you purchase will be uniquely different from every other nearly-identical item, enabling it to be identified and associated with you long after the purchase. And no, microwaving will generally not destroy the tags, and no, most items won't be microwaveable anyway. Try to microwave your couch.

Comments

Fun with RFID tags

[cat_jesus]

You don't have to disable RFID tags to screw with the data collection and tracking systems. If you are able to find and collect RFID tags you can carry them around with you wherever you go. Imagine having three or four car RFID tags on you as well as about a hundred refridgerator RFID tags. Dumpster diving for RFID tags would be great fun. You'd have tags from stuff that never really led back to you and would confuse the hell out of anyone trying to make sense of the history of the items. You could do things like remove all of the RFID tags from your clothes and keep only one RFID tag in your wallet that was from a pair of underwear. If anyone looked at the data they'd think some guy in the same pair of underwear he's been wearing for weeks is walking around carrying a few cars and a bunch of Refridgerators.

This would be much more fun than filling our frequent shopper cards with bogus information or completing surveys with ridiculous answers.