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Wisconsin Company Will Let Employees Use Microchip Implants To Buy Snacks, Open Doors (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the inject-at-your-own-risk dept.

A Wisconsin company called Three Square Market will soon offer employees implantable chips to open doors, buy snacks, log in to computers, and use office equipment like copy machines. The chips use near field communication (NFC) technology and will be implanted between the thumb and forefinger of participating employees. According to The Verge, around 50 people are supposedly getting the optional implants. From the report: NFC chips are already used in a couple of workplaces in Europe; The Los Angeles Times reported on startup workspace Epicenter's chip program earlier this year. In the US, installing them is also a form of simple biohacking. They're essentially an extension of the chips you'd find in contactless smart cards or microchipped pets: passive devices that store very small amounts of information. A Swedish rail company also lets people use implants as a substitute for fare cards. 32M CEO Todd Westby is clearly trying to head off misunderstandings and paranoia by saying that they contain "no GPS tracking at all" -- because again, it's comparable to an office keycard here.

3 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Owned by major prison vendor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    https://news.fastcompany.com/that-company-microchipping-its-employees-is-owned-by-a-major-prison-vendor-4044282

  2. Re:Severance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's no need to remove it. It's a string of numbers contained in a NFC chip. The head office just disables the clearance associated with that string of numbers.

  3. Depends on the Job by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's no need to remove it.

    That depends on what your next job is. If it involves working in an environment which may contain strong magnetic fields e.g. NMR/MRI, particle accelerators etc you need that thing removed. Also, depending on how paranoid airport security becomes, travelling with it in the future may be problematic.